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ILLUSTRATED LIBRARY EDITION, 



PASSAGES |l»p« C 

V 



THE FRENCH AND ITALIAN 
NOTE-BOOKS 



OF 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 



TWO VOLUMES IN ONE. 




l^^l-^^ 



BOSTON: . 
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, 

Late TicKNOR & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co, 
1876. 



K 



^e> 



ro^l 






Bntered according to Act of Congress, in tQe year 1871, 

BY JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO., 

in the OfRce of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



/>i'dY^6>d 



University Press : Welch, Bighlow. & Co., 

CAMEKIDGii. 



..?- 



0\ 



PASSAGES 




\ 



HAWTHORNE'S NOTE-BOOKS IN FRANCE 
AND ITALY. 



FRANCE. 

Hotel de Louvre, January 6, 1858. — On Tuesday 
morning, our dozen trunks and half-dozen carpet- 
bags being all ready packed and labelled, we began to 
prepare for our journey two or three hours before 
light. Two cabs were at the door by half past six, 
and at seven we set out for the London Bridge station, 
while it was still dark and bitterly cold. There were 
already many people in the streets, growing more nu- 
merous as we drove city-ward ; and, in Newgate Street, 
there was such a number of market-carts, that we al- 
most came to a dead lock with some of them. At the 
station we found several persons who were apparently 
going in the same train with us, sitting round the fire 
of the waiting-room. Since I came to England there 
has hardly been a morning when I should have less 
willingly bestirred myself before daylight; so sharp 
and inclement was the atmosphere. We started at 
half past eight, having taken through tickets to Paris 
by way of Folkestone and Boulogne. A foot-warmer 

VOL. I. 1 A. 



5^\. 



2 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l85^ 

(a long, flat tin utensil, full of hot water) was put into 
the carriage just before we started; but it did not 
make us more than half comfortable, and the frost 
soon began to cloud the windows, and shut out the 
prospect, so that we could only glance at the green 
fields — immortally green, whatever winter can do 
against them — and, at here and there, a stream or 
pool with the ice forming on its borders. It was the 
first cold weather of a very mild season. The snow 
began to fall in scattered and almost invisible flakes ; 
and it seemed as if we had stayed our English welcome 
out, and were to find nothing genial and hospitable 
there any more. 

At Folkestone, we were deposited at a railway sta- 
tion close upon a shingly beach, on which the sea 

broke in foam, and which J reported as strewn 

with shells and star-fish; behind was the town, with 
an old church in the midst ; and, close at hand, the 
pier, where lay the steamer in which we were to em- 
bark. But the air was so wintry, that I had no heart 

to explore the town, or pick up shells with J on 

the beach ; so we kept within doors during the two 
hours of our stay, now and then looking out of the 
windows at a fishing-boat or two, as they pitched and 
rolled with an ugly and irregular motion, such as the 
British Channel generally communicates to the craft 
that navigate it. 

At about one o'clock we went on board, and were 
soon under steam, at a rate that quickly showed a 
long line of the white cliffs of Albion behind us. It 
is a very dusky white, by the by. and the clifis them- 



ia'>8.] FRANCE. 3 

selves do not seem, at a distaBce, to be of imposing 
heightj and have too even an outline to be picturesqixe. 

As we increased our distance from England, the 
Trench coast came more and more distinctly in sight, 
"with a low, wavy outline, not very well worth looking 
at, except because it was the coast of France. lur- 
<ieed, I looked at it but little ;, for th# wind was bleak 
ftnd boisterous, and I went down into the cabin, where 
I fo^ind the fire very comfortable, and several people 
w«re sitretehed on sofas in a state of placid wretched- 
ness^ .... I have never suffered from searsickness> 
but had been somewhat apprehensive of this rougli 
strait between England and. France,, which seems to 
liave more potency over people's stomachs than ten 
times the extent of seg, in other quarters. Our pas- 
sage was Qi two haurSj, at the end. of which we land^ed 
on, French soil, amd found ourselves immediately in 
the clutches of the custom-house officers, who, how- 
ever, meafely made, a niomentary examination of my 
pafisport, a*ad allowed, us to pass without opening even 
one of our carpet-bags. The great bulk of our luggage 
fead been registered through tp Paries, ^r examination 
after our arrival there. 

We left Boulogne in about au; hour after our arri- 
val, when it waS; already a darkening twilight. The 
weather had gro.wa colder than ever, since our arrival 
in sunny France, and the night was now setting iQ,. 
wickedly black and dreary. The frost hardened upon 
tbe carriage windows in sucb thickness that I could, 
scarcely sprafrclj.: a peeprhole through it; but, ijcom 
sjick glipipse^ ^. I conjtdl catoh, the aspect of the 



'4 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

country seemed pretty much to resemble the Decem- 
ber aspect of my dear native land, — broad, bare, 
brown fields, with streaks of snow at the foot of ridges, 
and along fences, or in the furrows of ploughed soil. 
There was ice wherever there happened to be water to 
form it. 

We had feet-warmers in the carriage, but the cold 
crept in nevertheless ; and I do not remember hardly 
in my life a more disagreeable short journey than 
this, my first advance into French territory. My im- 
pression of France will always be that it is an Arctic 
region. At any season of the year, the tract over 
which we passed yesterday must be an uninteresting 
one as regards its natural features; and the only 
adornment, as far as I could observe, which art has 
given it, consists in straight rows of very stiff-looking 
and slender-stemmed trees. In the dusk they re- 
sembled poplar-trees. 

Weary and frost-bitten, — morally, if not physically, 
— we reached Amiens in three or four hours, and 
here I underwent much annoyance from the French 
railway officials and attendants, who, I believe, did 
not mean to incommode me, but rather to forward 
my purposes as far as they well could. If they would 
speak slowly and distinctly I might understand them 
well enough, being perfectly familiar with the written 
language, and knowing the principles of its pronun- 
ciation ; but, in their customary rapid utterance, it 
sounds like a string of mere gabble. When left to 

myself, therefore, I got into great difficulties It 

gives a taciturn personage like myself a new concep- 



1858.] FRANCE. 6 

tion as to the value of speech, even to him, when he 
finds himself unable either to speak or understand. 

Finally, being advised on all hands to go to the 
Hotel de Khin, we were carried thither in an omni- 
bus, rattling over a rough pavement, through an in- 
visible and frozen town; and, on our arrival, were 
ushered into a handsome salon, as chill as a tomb. 
They made a little bit of a wood fire for us in a 
low and deep chimney-hole, which let a hundred 
times more heat escape up the flue than it sent into 
the room. 

In the morning we sallied forth to see the Cathe- 
dral. 

The aspect of the old French town was very differ- 
ent from anything English ; whiter, infinitely cleaner ; 
higher and narrower houses, the entrance to most 
of which seeming to be through a great gateway, 
affording admission into a central court-yard ; a pub- 
lic square, with a statue in the middle, and another 
statue in a neighboring street. We met priests in 
three-cornered hats, long frock-coats, and knee- 
breeches ; also soldiers and gendarmes, and peasants 
and children, clattering over the pavements in wooden 
shoes. 

It makes a great impression of outlandishness to 
see the signs over the shop doors in a foreign tongue. 
If the cold had not been such as to dull my sense 
of novelty, and make all my perceptions torpid, I 
should have taken in a set of new impressions, and 
enjoyed them very much. As it was, I cared little 
for what I saw, but yet had life enough left to enjoy 



6 FRENCH AND .ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

the Cathedral of Amiens, which has Boanjr features 
i\iilik& those of English cathedrals; 

It stands in the midst of the cold, white towiij and 
has a high-shonldered look to a spectator accustomed 
to the minsters of England^ which cover a great spaee 
of ground in proportion to their height. The imprea- 
sion the latter gives is- of magnitude and mass; this 
French cathedral strikes one aa lofty. The exterior is 
venerable,, though but little- time'- worn by the action 
of the atmosphere ; aaid statuesi still keep their places 
in numerous niches, almost as perfect as when first 
placed there in the- l^iiTteenth; century; The principal 
doors are deep, elaborately wrought, pointed arches; 
and the: interior seemed to us^ at the; moment,, as 
grand as any that we had seen, and to afford as vast 
au idea of included space; it being of such- an airy 
height,, and with, no screen between the chaaacel and 
nave, as- in all the English cathedrals.. We saw- the 
differences, too, betwixt a church in which the: same 
form of worship for which it was originally built ia 
Still kept up, and those of England^; where it has been 
superseded for centuries;; for here, in the recess» of 
every arch of the side-aisles, beneath each, lofty win.- 
dow, there was a chapel dedicated to some saint,, and 
adorned with, great marble sculptures of the cinici- 
fixion,. and with, pictures,, execrably bad, in all. cases>, 
and various; kinda of gilding and ornamentation. Im* 
Uiensely tall wax candles stand upon the altars of 
these chapels, and before one sat a woman, with a great 
supply of tapers, one: of which was burning. I sup- 
pose these were to be lighted as offerings to the 



1858.] FBANOK. 7 

saints, by the true believers. Artificial flowers were 
huQg at some of the shrines, or placed under glass, 
lu every chapel, moreover, there was a confessional, — • 
a little oaken struct ixre, about as big as a sentry-box, 
with a closed part for the priest to sit in, and an 
open one for the penitent to kneel at, and speak, 
through the open-work of the priest's closet. Monu- 
ments, mural and others^ to long-departed worthies, 
and images of the Saviour, the Virgin, aad saints, 
weire numerous, everywhere about the church; and 
in the chancel there was a great deal of quaint and 
curious sculpture, fencing in the Holy of Holies, where 
the High Altar stands. There is not much painted 
glass; one or two very rich and beautiful rose-win- 
dows, however, that looked antique ; and the great 
eastern window which, I think, is modern. The pave- 
nsient has, probably, never been iren.ewed,. as one piece 
of work, since the structure was erected, and is. foot- 
WQr^ by the successive generations, though stiU in 
excellent repair. I saw one of the small, square stones, 
in it, bearing the date of 1597, and no doubt there, 
are a thousand older ones. It was gratifying to find 
the Cathedral in sncl\ good condition, without any 
traces of recent repair ; and it is perhaps a mark of 
difference between French and English character, that, 
the Revolution m the fonner country, though all 
religious worship disappears before it, does not seem 
to have caused such violence to ecclesiastical moniv? 
ments, as. the Reformatio;i and the reign of Puritan- 
ism in the latter. I did not see^ a mutilated shrine, 
or qv^ii ^. b;^jk,en-nosed image, iu; the T^^hole CatbedrfiJL 



8 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [I808. 

But, probably, the very rage of the English fanatics 
against idolatrous tokens, and their smashing blows at 
them, were symptoms of sincerer religious faith than 
the French were capable of. These last did not care 
enough about their Saviour to beat down his crucified 
image; and they preserved the works of sacred art, 
for the sake only of what beauty there was in them. 

While we were in the Cathedral, we saw several 
persons kneeling at their devotions on the steps of the 
chancel and elsewhere. One dipped his fingers in the 
holy water at the entrance : by the by, I looked into 
the stone basin that held it, and saw it full of ice. 
Could not all that sanctity at least keep it thawed 1 
Priests — jolly, fat, mean-looking fellows, in white 
robes — went hither and thither, but did not inter- 
rupt or accost us. 

There were other peculiarities, which I suppose I 
shall see more of in my visits to other churches, but 
now w^e were all glad to make our stay as brief as 
possible, the atmosphere of the Cathedral being so 
bleak, and its stone pavement so icy cold beneath our 
feet. We returned to the hotel, and the chamber- 
maid brought me a book, in which she asked me to 
inscribe my name, age, profession, country, destination, 
and the authorization under which I travelled. After 
the freedom of an English hotel, so much greater than 
even that of an American one, where they make you 
disclose your name, this is not so pleasant. 

We left Amiens at half past one ; and I can tell as 
little of the country between that place and Paris, as 
between Boulogne and Amiens. The windows of our 



1858.] FRANCE. 9 

railway carriage were already frosted with French 
breath when we got into it, and the ice grew thicker 
and thicker continually. I tried, at various times, to 
rub a peep-hole through, as before ; but the ice im- 
mediately shot its crystallized tracery over it again ; 
and, indeed, there was little or nothing to make it 
worth while to look out, so bleak was the scene. Now 
and then a chateau, too far off for its characteristics 
to be discerned ; now and then a church, with a tall 
gray tower, and a little peak atop ; here and there a 
village or a town, which we could not well see. At 
sunset there was just that clear, cold, wintry sky 
which I remember so well in America, but have never 
seen in England. 

At five we reached Paris, and were suffered to take 
a carriage to the Hotel de Louvre, without any ex- 
amination of the little luggage we had with us. Arriv- 
ing, we took a suite of apartments, and the waiter im- 
mediately lighted a wax candle in each separate room. 

We might have dined at the table d 'hote, but pre- 
ferred the restaurant connected with and within the 
hotel. All the dishes were very delicate, and a vast 
change from the simple English system, with its 
joints, shoulders, beefsteaks, and chops ', but I doubt 
whether English cookery, for the very reason that it 
is so simple, is not better for men's moral and spirit- 
ual nature than French. In the former case, you 
know that you are gratifying your animal needs and 
propensities, and are duly ashamed of it ; but, in deal- 
ing with these French delicacies, you delude yourself 
into the idea that you are cultivating your taste 
1* 



10 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

^hile satisfying your appetite. This last, however, it 
rgq^ires a good deal of perseverance tq accomplish. 

In thp Cathedr^} at Aipiens there were printed listp 
of acts of devotion posted QH th^ columns, such as 
prayers at the shrines of certain saints, whereby plen- 
ary indulgences might be gained. It is to be obseryed, 
however, that all these external fprn^s were necessarily 
aceGijipauied with true penitence and religious deyop 
tipn. 

Hotel c?€ Louvre^ January Sth. — It was so fear- 
fully cold this momipg that I really felt little or no 
puriosity to see the city. .... Until after one o'clock, 
therefore, I knew nothing of Paris except the lights 
which I hft4 seen beneath our window the evening 
before, f^rj far downward, in the narrow Rue St. 
Honpre, ^n(i tjie rumble of the wheels, which cou- 
tinued later thai^ I was awake to hear it, and began 
agaiu before dawn. I could see, too, tall houses, that 
seemed to he occupied in every story, and that had 
windows on the steep roofs. One of these houses is 
six stories high. This Rue St. Honore is pnp pf the old 
streets in Paris, an(i is that iu which Henry lY. was 
assassinated; but it has not, in t^is part p,f it, the 
aspect of antiquity. 

After one o'clock we all went out and walked 
along the Rue de Riypli. .... We are here, right in 
the piidst of Paris, ^nd closje to whatever is best 
known to those who hear pr read about it, — the 
Louvre beiflg across the street, the Palais ^pyal hvi^ 
^'^ Vii\i\% yf^j o^y th^ Tuileries joii^iiig t9 t]^e Inpuyre^ 



J&58,] FBANCf). n 

the Place de la Copcorde just beyo^d, verging ou 
wl^6h is the Champs Elyseeg, We loqke^ about ug 
for ft suitable place to dine, and goon found the Re- 
staurant des Echellea, where w^ entered at a venture, 
and were courteously received, It has a, handsomely 
furnished saloon, muph set off with gilding and mir- 
rors; ^nd appears to be frequented by English and 
American^) its cqrte^ a bound volume, being printed 
in English as well as French, . . , . 

It was now nearly four o'clock, and too l^te to vi^it 
the gj|,lleries of the Louvre, or tp do anything else 
but walk a little way along the street. The splei^dgr 
of Paris, so far as I have seen, takes me altogether 
by surprise : such stately edifices, prolonging them- 
selves in unwearying magnificence and beauty, and, 
ever and anon, a long vista of a street, with a column 
rising at the end of it, or a triumphal arch, wrpught 
m memoay of some, grand event. The Ught stone or 
9t\iceo, whplly nntarnished by smoke and soot, put?i 
LondoQ to the, blush, if a blush co^ld be geen QXi its 
dingy face ; but, indeed, London is not tp he me^T 
tipned with, nor eomparpd even with P^aria. I never 
knew what a palace was till I had a glimpse pf tlie. 
Louvre and the Tuileries; never h^d my idea of a 
Qity b^en gratified till I trod those stately streets. 
Th^ life, of thp scene, too, is infinitely more pictu- 
resque than that of London, with its monstrous throng 
of grave faeps and black coats; whereas, there, you 
see soldiers and priests, policemen in cocked hats. 
Zouaves with tiirbf^ns, long mantles, and bronzed, 
half M9orisl^ f^P?s^j ^nd a grpat many people, whom 



12 FBENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

you perceive to be outside of your experience, and 
know them ugly to look at, and fancy them villa- 
nous. Truly, I have no sympathies towards the French 
people ; their eyes do not win me, nor do their glances 
melt and mingle with mine. But they do grand and 
beautiful things in the architectural way; and I am 
grateful for it. The Place de la Concorde is a most 
splendid square, large enough for a nation to erect 
trophies in of all its triumphs ; and on one side of it is 
the Tuileries, on the opposite side the Champs Elys^es, 
and, on a third, the Seine, adown which we saw large 
cakes of ice floating, beneath the arches of a bridge. 
The Champs Ely sees, so far as I saw it, had not a 
grassy soil beneath its trees, but the bare earth, white 
and dusty. The very dust, if I saw nothing else, 
would assure me that I was out of England. 

We had time only to take this little walk, when 
it began to grow dusk ; and, being so pitilessly cold, 
we hurried back to our hotel. Thus far, I think, what 
I have seen of Paris is wholly unlike what I expected ; 
but very like an imaginary picture which I had con- 
ceived of St. Petersburg, — new, bright, magnificent, 
and desperately cold. 

A great part of this architectural splendor is due 
to the present Emperor, who has wrought a great 
change in the aspect of the city within a very few 
years. A traveller, if he looks at the thing selfishly, 
ought to wish him a long reign and arbitrary power, 
since he makes it his policy to illustrate his capital 
srith palatial edifices, which are, however, better for a 
stranger to look at, than for his own people to pay for. 



J858.] FRANCE. 13 

We have spent to-day chiefly in seeing some of 
the galleries of the Louvre. I must confess that the 
vast and beautiful edifice struck me far more than the 
pictures, sculpture, and curiosities which it contains, — 
the shell more than the kernel inside ; such noble 
suites of rooms and halls were those through which 
we first passed, containing Egyptian, and, farther 
onward, Greek and Roman antiquities ; the walls 
cased in variegated marbles ; the ceilings glowing with 
beautiful frescos; the whole extended into infinite 
vistas by mirrors that seemed like vacancy, and multi- 
plied everything forever. The picture-rooms are not so 
brilliant, and the pictures themselves did not greatly 
win upon me in this one day. Many artists were em- 
ployed in copying them, especially in the rooms hung 
with the productions of French painters. Not a few 
of these copyists were females; most of them were 
young men, picturesquely mustached and bearded ; 
but some were elderly, who, it was pitiful to think, 
had passed through life without so much success as 
now to paint pictures of their own. 

From the pictures we went into a suite of rooms 
where are preserved many relics of the ancient and 
later kings of France ; more relics of the elder ones, 
indeed, than I supposed had remained extant through 
the Revolution. The French seem to like to keep 
memorials of whatever they do, and of whatever their 
forefathers have done, even if it be ever so little to 
their credit; and perhaps they do not take matters 
sufficiently to heart to detest anything that has ever 
happened. What surprised me most were the golden 



14 FRENCH AND IJAWAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l85^ 

sceptre and the magnifioent sword and other gorgeous 
relics of Charlemagne, -^ a person whom I had always 
associated with a sheepskin cloak. There were suits 
of armor and weapons that had been worn and 
handled by a great many of the French kings ; and a 
religious book that had belonged to St. Louis; a^ 
dressing-glass, most richly ^t with precious stones, 
which formerly stood on the toilet-table of Catherino 
di Medici, and in which I saw my own face where hers 
had been. And there were a thousand other treasures, 
just as we^ worth mentioning aa, these. If eaeh, 
monarch could have been summoned from Hades to 
claim his own relics, we should have had the halls full 
of the old Childerics, Charleses, Bourbons and Capets, 
Henrys and Louises, snatching with ghostly hands at 
sceptres, swords, armor, and mantles; and Napoleon 
would have seen, apparently, almost everything that 
personally belonged to him, — his coat, hia cocked 
hats, his camp-desk, his fteld-bed, his knives, forks, 
and plates, and even a lock of his hair. I must let it. 
all go. These things ©*mnot b© reproduced by peu 
and ink. 

Motel cfe Lcmvrey January ^th, -r- . , . , Lasjt 
evening Mr. Fezandie called. He spok$ v^jfy freely 
respecting the Emperor and the hatred entertained 
against him in France; but said that be is more 
powerful, that is, more finaly fixed as ^ ruler, than 
ever the first Napoleon was. W% vssh^ look back upon 
the first Napoleon as one of the eternal facts of the, 
past, a great boulder in history^ cannot well estimate 



1858.]! TRASCE. 15 

Row moinentaj?y and unsubstantial the" great Captain 
may have appeared to those who beheld his rise out 
of obscurity. They never^ perhaps, took the reality 
©f his career fairly into their minds, before it was over. 
The present Emperor, I believe, has already been as- 
long in possession; of tiie supreme power as his uncle' 
was. I should like to see him, and may,: perhaps, do 
so, as he is our neighbor, across the way. 

Tte morning Miss -, the celebrated astronom- 
ical Iftdy, called. She had brought a letter of intro- 
duction to' me, while consul ; and her purpose now 
was* to see if w«' couidi tafce; her as one of our party to 
Rome, whither she likewise is bound. We readily 
consented, for she seems to be a simple, strong,, 
healthy-humored woman;, who will not fling herself as 
Bi burden on^ our shoulders ; and my only wonder is 
that ar person evidently fflD able to take care of herself 
shoiUd wish to have an escort.. 

We issued forth at about eleven, and went dbwn 
the Rue St. Honors, which is narrow, and has houses 
ef' five! &r six stories on either side, between which 
run= tiie streets like a gully in a rock. One face of 
our hotel borders and looks: on this street. After go- 
ing a good' way,, we came: to an intersection with an- 
other street, the- name of which I forget;, but,. at this 
point, Ravaillac sprang at the carriage of Henry IV. 
and plunged his dagger into him. As we went down 
the Rue St. Honor^, it grew more and more thronged, 
and with a meaner class of people. The houses still 
were high) and without the shabbiness of exterior that 
distinguishes the old part of London, being of lights 



16 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

colored stone ; but I never saw anything that so much 
came up to my idea of a swarming city as this narrow, 
crowded, and rambling street. 

Thence we turned into the Rue St. Denis, which 
is one of the oldest streets in Paris, and is said to 
have been first marked out by the track of the saint's 
footsteps, where, after his martyrdom, he walked along 
it, with his head under his arm, in quest of a burial- 
place. This legend may account for any crookedness 
of the street ; for it could not reasonably be asked of 
a headless man that he should walk straight. 

Through some other indirections we at last found 

the Rue Bergere, down which I went with J in 

quest of Hottinguer & Co., the bankers, while the rest 
of us went along the Boulevards, towards the Church 

of the Madeleine This business accomplished, 

J and I threaded our way back, and overtook 

the rest of the party, still a good distance from the 
Madeleine. I know not why the Boulevards are called 
so. They are a succession of broad walks through 
broad streets, and were much thronged with people, 
most of whom appeared to be bent more on pleasure 
than business. The sun, long before this, had come 
out brightly, and gave us the first genial and com- 
fortable sensations which we have had in Paris. 

Approaching the Madeleine, we found it a most 
beautiful church, that might have been adapted from 
Heathenism to Catholicism; for on each side there is 
a range of magnificent pillars, unequalled, except by 
those of the Parthenon. A mourning coach, arrayed 
in black and silver, was drawn up at the steps, and 



1858.] FRANCE. 17 

the front of the church was hung with black cloth, 
which covered the whole entrance. However, seeing 
the people going in, we entered along with them. 
Glorious and gorgeous is the Madeleine. The entrance 
to the nave is beneath a most stately arch 5 and three 
arches of equal height open from the nave to the side 
aisles; and at the end of the nave is another great 
arch, rising, with a vaulted half-dome, over the high 
altar. The pillars supporting these arches are Corin- 
thian, with richly sculptiu-ed capitals ; and wherever 
gilding might adorn the church, it is lavished like sun- 
shine ; and within the sweeps of the arches there are 
fresco paintings of sacred subjects, and a beautiful 
picture covers the hollow of the vault over the altar ; 
all this, besides much sculpture ; and especially a 
group above and around the high altar, representing 
the Magdalen smiling down upon angels and arch- 
angels, some of whom are kneeling, and shadowing 
themselves with their heavy marble wings. There is 
no such thing as making my page glow with the most 
distant idea of the magnificence of this church, in its 
details and in its whole. It was founded a hundred 
or two hundred years ago; then Bonaparte contem- 
plated transforming it into a Temple of Victory, or 
building it anew as one. The restored Bourbon re- 
made it into a church , but it still has a heathenish 
look, and will never lose it. 

When we entered we saw a crowd of people, all 
pressing forward towards the high altar, before which 
burned a hundred wax lights, some of which were six 
or seven feet high ; and, altogether, they shone like a 



18 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

galaxy of stars. In the middle of the iiave^ moreover, 
there was another galaxy of wax candles burning 
around an inmiense pall of black velvet, embroidered 
with silver, which seemed to cover, not only a coffin, 
but a sarcophagus, or something still more huge. 
The organ was rumbling forth a deep, lugubrions ba^, 
accompanied with heavy ehaating of prie&ts, out of 
which sometimes rose the clear, young voices, ©f chor- 
isters, like light flashing out of the gloom. The 
church, between the arch^Sj along th© nave, and 
round the altar, was hung with broad e^spanses of 
black cloth ; and all the priests had their saojed vest- 
ments covered with black. They looked exceedingly 
well ; I never saw anything half so well got up, on the 
st^^. Some of these ecclesiastical figures were v«ry 
stately and noble, and knelt and bowed, and bore 
aloft the cross, and swnng the censers in a way that 
I liked to see. The ceremonies of the Catholic 
Church were a superb work of ajpt, or perhaps a true 
growth of man's religions, nature ; and so long as men 
felt their original ineaniiig» they must have been full 
of awe and glory, Being of another parish, I looked 
on coldly, bvit. not iri^ve;x3ntly, and was glad, to see 
the funer-al service so well performed,, and very g]|ad 
when it was over* WhAt struck me as singular> the 
peraon who. performed the pa^, usually performed 
by a verger, keeping order ^rifiong the audience, wore 
a gold-embroidered scarf, a cocked hat, and, I believe, 
a sword, and had the ftir pf % military m^n.. 

Before the close oi the aBryice a coint^ibution-b,ox —r- 
or> rather, a blapk v^het \>J^^ — w^i^ l\ande4 ^bout by 



1858.] PRANCE. 19 

this military verger ; and I gave J a franc to put 

in, though I did not in the least know for what. 

Issuing from the church, we inquired of two or 
three persons who was the distinguished defunct at 
whose obsequies we had been assisting, for we had 
some hope that it might be Rachel, who died last 
week, and is still above ground. But it proved to 
be only a Madame Mentel, or some such name, whom 
nobody had ever before heard of. I forgot to say that 
her coffin was taken from beneath the illuminated 
hall, and carried out of the church before us. 

When we left the Madeleine we took our way to 
the Place de la Concorde, and thence through the 
Elysian Fields (which, I suppose, are the French 
idea of heaven) to Bonaparte's triumphal arch. The 
Champs Elys6es may look pretty in summer ; though 
I suspect they must be somewhat dry and artificial 
at whatever season, — the trees being slender and 
scraggy, and requiring to be renewed every few years. 
The soil is not genial to them. The strangest pecu- 
liarity of this place, however, to eyes fresh from moist 
and verdant England, is, that there is not one blade 
of grass in all the Elysian Fields, nothing but hard 
clay, now covered with white dust. It gives the 
whole scene the air of being a contrivance of man, 
in which Nature has either not been invited to take 
any part, or has declined to do so. There were 
merry-go-rounds, wooden horses, and other provis- 
ion for children's amusements among the trees; and 
booths, and tables of cakes, and candy-women; and 
restaurants on the borders of the wood; but very 



20 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858, 

few people there; and doubtless we can form no 
idea of what the scene might become when alive with 
French gayety and vivacity. 

As we walked onward the Triumphal Arch began to 
loom up in the distance, looking huge and massive, 
though still a long way off. It was not, however, till 
we stood almost beneath it that we really felt the 
grandeur of this great arch, including so large a space 
of the blue sky in its airy sweep. At a distance it 
impresses the spectator with its solidity ; nearer, with 
the lofty vacancy beneath it. There is a spiral stair- 
case within one of its immense limbs ; and, climbing 
steadily upward, lighted by a lantern which the door- 
keeper's wife gave us, we had a bird's-eye view of 
Paris, much obscured by smoke or mist. Several 
interminable avenues shoot with painful directness 
right towards it. 

On our way homeward we visited the Place Ven- 
dome, in the centre of which is a tall column, sculp- 
tured from top to bottom, all over the pedestal, and 
all over the shaft, and with Napoleon himself on the 
summit. The shaft is wreathed round and roundabout 
with representations of what, as far as I could distin- 
guish, seemed to be the Emperor's victories. It has 
a very rich effect. At the foot of the column we saw 
wreaths of artificial flowers, suspended there, no 
doubt, by some admirer of Napoleon, still ardent 
enough to expend a franc or two in this way. 

Hotel de Louvre^ January \Oth. — We had pur- 
posed going to the Cathedral of Notre Dame to-day, 



1858.] FRANCE. 21 

but the weather and walking were too unfavorable 
for a distant expedition; so we merely went across 
the street to the Louvre 

Our principal object this morning was to see the 
pencil drawings by eminent artists. Of these the 
Louvre has a very rich collection, occupying many 
apartments, and comprising sketches by Annibal 
Caracci, Claude, Kaphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Michel 
Angelo, Rubens, Eembrandt, and almost all the other 
great masters, whether French, Italian, Dutch, or 
whatever else ; the earliest drawings of their great 
pictures, when they had the glory of their pristine idea 
directly before their minds' eye, — that idea which 
inevitably became overlaid with their own handling of 
it in the finished painting. No doubt the painters 
themselves had often a happiness in these rude, off- 
hand sketches, which they never felt again in the 
same work, and which resulted in disappointment, 
after they had done their best. To an artist, the 
collection must be most deeply interesting : to my- 
self, it was merely curious, and soon grew wearisome. 

In the same suite of apartments, there is a collec- 
tion of miniatures, some of them very exquisite, and 
absolutely lifelike, on their small scale. I observed 
two of Franklin, both good and picturesque, one of 
them especially so, with its cloud-like white hair. I 
do not think we have produced a man so interesting 
to contemplate, in many points of view, as he. Most 
of our great men are of a character that I find it 
impossible to warm into life by thought, or by lavish- 
ing any amount of sympathy upon them. Not so 



22 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

Franklin, who had a great deal of common and un-» 
common human nature in him. 

Much of the time, while my wife was looking at 
the drawings, I sat observing the crowd of Sunday 
visitors. They were generally of a lower class than 
those of week-days; private soldiers in a variety of 
uniforms, and, for the most part, ugly little men, but 
decorous and well behaved. I saw medals on many 
of their breasts, denoting Crimean service ; some were 
the English medal, with Queen Victoria's head upon 
it. A blue coat, with red, baggy trousers, was the 
most usual uniform. Some had short-breasted coats, 
made in the same style as those of the first Napoleon, 
which we had seen in the preceding rooms. The 
pohcemen, distributed pretty abundantly about the 
rooms, themselves looked military, wearing cocked 
hats and swords. There were many women of the 
piiddiing classes -, some, evidently, of the lowest, but 
clean and decent, in colored gowns and caps ; and 
laboring men, citizens, Sunday gentlemen, young 
artists, too, no doubt looking, with educated eyes, at 
these art-treasures, and I think, as a general thing, 
each man was mated with a woman. The soldiers, 
however, came in pairs or little squads, accompanied 
by women. I did not much like any of the French 
faces, and yet I am not sure that there is not more 
resemblance between them and the American physi- 
ognomy, than between the latter and the English. 
The women are not pretty, but in all ranks above the 
lowest they have a trained expression that supplies 
the place of beauty. 



1858.] FRANCE. 23 

I was wearied to death with, the drawings, and 
began to have that dreary and desperate feehng 
which has often come upon me when the sights last 
longer than my capacity for receiving them. As our 
time in Paris, however, is brief and precious, we next 
inquired our way to the galleries of sculpture, and 
these alone are of astounding extent, reaching, I 
should think, all round one quadrangle of the Louvre, 
on the basement floor. Hall after hall opened inter- 
minably before us, and on either side of us, paved 
and incrusted with variegated and beautifully polished 
marble, relieved against which stand the antique 
statues and groups, interspersed with great urns and 
vases, sarcophagi, altars, tablets, busts of historic 
personages, and all manner of shapes of marble which 
consummate art has transmuted into precious stones. 
Not that I really did feel much impressed by any of 
this sculpture then, nor saw more than two or three 
things which T thought very beautiful ; but whether 
it be good or no, I suppose the world has nothing 
better, unless it be a few world-renowned statues in 
Italy. I was even more struck by the skill and in- 
genuity of the French in arranging these sculptural 
remains, than by the value of the sculptures them- 
selves. The galleries, I should judge, have been 
recently prepared, and on a magnificent system, — 
the adornments being yet by no means completed, — 
for besides the floor and wall-casings of rich, polished 
marble, the vaulted ceilings of some of the apartments 
are painted in fresco, causing them to glow as if the 
sky were opened. It must be owned, however, that 



24 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

the statuary, often time-worn and darkened from its 
original brilliancy by weather-stains, does not suit 
well as furniture for such splendid rooms. When we 
see a perfection of modern finish around them, we 
recognize that most of these statues had been thrown 
down from their pedestals, hundreds of years ago, and 
have been battered and externally degraded ; and 
though whatever spiritual beauty they ever had may 
still remain, yet this is not made more apparent by 
the contrast betwixt the new gloss of modem uphol- 
steiy, and their tarnished, even if immortal grace. I 
rather think the English have given really the more 
hospitable reception to the maimed Theseus, and his 
broken-nosed, broken-legged, headless companions, be- 
cause flouting them with no gorgeous fittings up. 

By this time poor J (who, with his taste for art 

yet undeveloped, is the companion of all our visits to 
sculpture and picture galleries) was wofully hungiy, 
and for bread we had given him a stone, — not one 
stone, but a thousand. We returned to the hotel, 
and it being too damp and raw to go to our Restaurant 
des Echelles, we dined at the hotel. In my opinion 
it would require less time to cultivate our gastronomic 
taste than taste of any other kind ; and, on the whole, 
I am not sure that a man would not be wise to afford 
himself a little discipline in this line. It is certainly 
throwing away the bounties of Providence, to treat 
them as the English do, producing from better mate- 
rials than the French have to work upon nothing but 
sirloins, joints, joints, steaks, steaks, steaks, chops, 
chops, chops, chops ! We had a soup to-day, in which 



1858.] FRANCE. 25 

twenty kinds of vegetables were represented, and 
manifested each its own aroma ; a fillet of stewed beef, 
and a fowl, in some sort of delicate fincassee. We had 
a bottle of Chablis, and renewed ourselves, at the 
close of the banquet, with a plate of Chateaubriand 
ice. It was all very good, and we respected ourselves 
far more than if we had eaten a quantity of red roast 

beef; but I am not quite sure that we were right 

Among the relics of kings and princes, I do not 
know that there was anything more interesting than a 
little brass cannon, two or three inches long, which had 
been a toy of the unfortunate Dauphin, son of Louis 
XVI. There was a map, — a hemisphere of the world, 
' — which his father had drawn for this poor boy ; very 
neatly done, too. The sword of Louis XVL, a mag- 
nificent rapier, with a beautifully damasked blade ; 
and a jewelled scabbard, but without a hilt, is like- 
wise preserved, as is the hilt of Henry IV. 's sword. 
But it is useless to begin a catalogue of these things. 
"What a collection it is, including Charlemagne's sword 
and sceptre, and the last Dauphin's little toy cannon, 
and so much between the two ! 

Hotel de Louvre, January 11th. — This was another 
chill, raw day, characterized by a spitefulness of 
atmosphere which I do not remember ever to have 
experienced in my own dear country. We meant to 

have visited the Hotel des Invalides, but J and I 

walked to the Rivolie, the Place de la Concorde, the 
Champs Elysees, and to the Place de Beaujon, and to 
the residence of the American minister, where I wished 

VOL. I. 2 



26 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

to arrange about my passport. After speaking with 
the Secretary of Legation, we were ushered into the 
minister's private room, where he received me with 

great kindness. Mr. is an old gentleman with a 

white head, and a large, florid face, which has an ex- 
pression of amiability, not unmingled with a certain 
dignity. He did not rise from his arm-chair to greet 
me, — a lack of ceremony which I imputed to the 
gout, feeling it impossible that he should have will- 
ingly failed in courtesy to one of his twenty-five mil- 
lion sovereigns. In response to some remark of mine 
about the shabby w^ay in which our government treats 
its officials pecuniarily, he gave a detailed account of 
his own troubles on that score ; then expressed a hope 
that I had made a good thing out of my consulate, 
and inquired whether I had received a hint to resign ; 
to which I replied that, for various reasons, I had re- 
signed of my own accord, and before Mr. Buchanan's 
inauguration. We agreed, however, in disapproving 
the system of periodical change in our foreign officials ; 
and I remarked that a consul or an ambassador ought 
to be a citizen both of his native country and of the 
one in which he resided ; and that his possibility of 
beneficent influence depended largely on his being so. 

Apropos to which Mr. said that he had once 

asked a diplomatic friend of long experience, what was 
the first duty of a minister. " To love his own coun- 
try, and to watch over its interests," answered the 

diplomatist. " And his second duty 1 " asked Mr. . 

" To love and to promote tjie interests of the country 
to which he is accredited," said his friend. This is a 



1858.] FRANCE. 27 

very Christian and sensible view of the matter ; but 
it can scarcely have happened once in our whole diplo- 
matic history, that a minister can have had time to 
overcome his first rude and ignorant prejudice against 
the country of his mission ; and if there were any 
suspicion of his having done so, it would be held 
abundantly sufficient ground for his recall. I like 
Mr. , a good -hearted, sensible old man. 

J and I returned along the Champs Elysees, 

and, crossing the Seine, kept on our way by the river's 
brink, looking at the titles of books on the long lines 
of stalls that extend between the bridges. Novels, 
fairy-tales, dream books, treatises of behavior and eti- 
quette, collections of hon-mots and of songs, w^ere in- 
terspersed with volumes in the old style of calf and 
gilt binding, the works of the classics of French liter- 
ature. A good many persons, of the poor classes, and 
of those apparently well to do, stopped transitorily to 
look at these books. On the other side of the street 
was a range of tall edifices with shops beneath, and 
the quick stir of French life hurrying, and babbling, 
and swarming along the sidewalk. We passed two or 
three bridges, occurring at short intervals, and at last 
we recrossed the Seine by a bridge which oversteps 
the river, from a point near the National Institute, and 
reaches the other side, not far from the Louvre 

Though the day was so disagreeable, we thought it 
best not to lose the remainder of it, and therefore set 
out to visit the Cathedral of Notre Dame. We took 
a fiacre in the Place de Carousel, and drove to the 
door. On entering, we found the interior miserably 



28 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

shut off from view by the stagings erected for the pur- 
pose of repairs. Penetrating from the nave towards 
the chancel, an official personage signified to us that 
we must first purchase a ticket for each grown person, 
Rt the price of half a franc each. This expenditure 
admitted us into the sacristy, where we were taken 
in charge by a guide, who came down upon us with 
an avalanche or cataract of French, descriptive of a 
great many treasures reposited in this chapel. I 
understood hardly more than one word in ten, but 
gathered doubtfully that a bullet which was shown us 
was the one that killed the late Archbishop of Paris, 
SR the floor of the Cathedral. [But this was a mis- 
take. It was the archbishop who was killed in the 
insurrection of 1848. Two joints of his backbone 
were also shown.] Also, that some gorgeously em- 
broidered vestments, which he drew forth, had been 
used at the coronation of Napoleon I. There were two 
large, full-length portraits hanging aloft in the sacristy, 
and a gold or silver gilt, or, at all events, gilt image 
of the Virgin, as large as life, standing on a pedestal. 
The guide had much to say about these, but, under- 
standing him so imperfectly, I have nothing to record. 

The guide's supervision of us seemed not to extend 
beyond this sacristy, on quitting which he gave us per- 
mission to go where we pleased, only intimating a 
hope that we would not forget him; so I gave him 
half a franc, though thereby violating an inhibition on 
the printed ticket of entrance. 

We had been much disappointed at first by the 
apparently narrow limits of the interior of this famous 



1858.] FRANCE. 29 

church ; but now, as we made our way round the 
choir, gazing into chapel after chapel, each with its 
painted window, its crucifix, its pictures, its confes- 
sional, and afterwards came back into the nave, where 
arch rises above arch to the lofty roof, we came to 
thj conclusion that it was very sumptuous. It is the 
greatest of pities that its grandeur and solemnity 
should just now be so infinitely marred by the work- 
men's boards, timber, and ladders occupying the 
whole centre of the edifice, and screening all its best 
efiects. It seems to have been already most richly 
ornamented, its roof being painted, and the capitals 
of the pillars gilded, and their shafts illuminated in 
fresco ; and no doubt it will shine out gorgepusly 
when all the repairs and adornments shall be com- 
pleted. Even now it gave to my actual sight what I 
have often tried to imagine in my visits to the Eng- 
lish cathedrals, — the pristine glory of those edifices, 
when they stood glowing with gold and picture, fresh 
from the architects' and adorners' hands. 

The interior loftiness of Notre Dame, moreover, 
gives it a sublimity which would swallow up anything 
that might look gewgawy in its ornamentation, were 
we to consider it window by window, or pillar by 
pillar. It is an advantage of these vast edifices, rising 
over us and spreading about us in such a firmamental 
way, that we cannot spoil them by any pettiness of 
our own, but that they receive (or absorb) our pet- 
tiness into their own immensity. Every little fan- 
tasy finds its place and propriety in them, like a flower 
on the earth's broad bosom. 



30 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

When we emerged from the Cathedral, we found it 
beginning to rain or snow, or both ; and, as we had 
dismissed our fiacre at the door, and could find no 
other, we were at a loss what to do. We stood a 
few moments on the steps of the Hotel Dieu, looking 
up at the front of Notre Dame, with its twin towers, 
and its three deeprpointed arches, piercing through a 
great thickness of stone, and throwing a cavern-like 
gloom around these entrances. The front is very 
rich. Though so huge, and all of gray stone, it is 
carved and fretted with statues and innumerable 
devices, as cunningly as any ivory casket in which 
relics are kept ; but its size did not so much impress 
me 

Hdtel de Louvre, January \2th. — This has been 
a bright day as regards weather; but I have done 
little or nothing worth recording. After breakfast, I 
set out in quest of the consul, and found him up a 
court, at 51 Rue Cammartin, in an office rather 
smaller, I think, than mine at Liverpool ; but, to say 
the truth, a little better furnished. I was received 
in the outer apartment by an elderly, brisk-looking 
man, in whose air, respectful and subservient, and 
yet with a kind of authority in it, I recognized the 

vice-consul. He introduced me to Mr. , who sat 

writing in an inner room ; a very gentlemanly, cour- 
teous, cool man of the world, whom I should take to 
be an excellent person for consul at Paris. He tells 
me that he has resided here some years, although his 
occupancy of the consulate dates only from November 



1G58.] FRANCE. 31 

last. Consulting him respecting my passport, he gave 
me what appear good reasons why I should get all 
the necessary vises here ; for example, that the mse of 
a minister carries more weight than that of a consul ; 
and especially that an Austrian consul will never vise 
a passport unless he sees his minister's name upon 

it. Mr. has travelled much in Italy, and ought 

to be able to give me sound advice. His opinion was, 
that at this season of the year I had better go by 
steamer to Civita Yecchia, instead of landing at Leg- 
horn, and thence journeying to Rome. On this point 
I shall decide when the time comes. As I left the 
office the vice-consul informed me that there was a 
charge of five francs and some sous for the consul's 
vise, a tax which surprised me, — the whole business 
of passports having been taken from consuls before 1 
quitted office, and the consular fee having been an' 

nulled even earlier. However, no doubt Mr. 

had a fair claim to my five francs ; but, really, it is 
not half so pleasant to pay a consular fee as it used 
to be to receive it. 

Afterwards I walked to Notre Dame, the rich front 
of which I viewed with more attention than yesterday. 
There are whole histories, carved in stone figures, 
within the vaulted arches of the three entrances in 
this west front, and twelve apostles in a row above, 
and as much other sculpture as would take a month 
to see. AVe then walked quite round it, but I had no 
sense of immensity from it, not even that of great 
height, as from many of the cathedrals in England. 
It stands very near the Seine ; indeed, if I mistake 



33 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [lS58, 

not, it is on an island formed by two branches of the 
river. Behind it, is what seems to be a small public 
ground (or garden, if a space entirely denuded of 
grass or other green thing, except a few trees can be 
called so), with benches, and a monument in the 
midst. This quarter of the city looks old, and ap- 
pears to be inhabited by poor people, and to be 
busied about small and petty affairs; the most pic- 
turesque business that I saw being that of the old 
woman who sells crucifixes of pearl and of wood at the 
cathedral door. We bought two of these yesterday. 

I must again speak of the horrible muddiness, not 
only of this part of the city, but of all Paris, so far 
as I have traversed it to-da}?". My ways, since I came 
to Europe, have often lain through nastiness, but I 
never before saw a pavement so universally over- 
spread with mud-padding as that of Paris. It is diffi- 
cult to imagine where so much filth can come from. 

After dinner I walked through the gardens of the 
Tuileries ; but as dusk was coming on, and as I was 
afraid of being shut up within the iron railing, I did 
not have time to examine them particularly. There 
are wide, intersecting walks, fountains, broad basins, 
and many statues ; but almost the whole surface of 
the gardens is barren earth, instead of the verdure 
that would beautify an English pleasure-ground of 
this sort. In the summer it has doubtless an agree- 
able shade ; but at this season the naked branches 
look meagre, and sprout from slender trunks. Like 
the trees in the Champs Elys^es, those, I presume, in 
the gardens of the Tuileries need renewing every few 



1858.] FRANCE. 33 

years. The same is true of the human race, — families 
becoming extinct after a generation or two of residence 
in Paris. Nothing really thrives here ; man and 
vegetables have but an artificial life, like flowers stuck 
in a little mould, but never taking root. I am quite 
tired of Paris, and long for a home more than ever. 

MARSEILLES. 

Hotel dJ Angleterrey January \bth. — On Tuesday 
morning (12th) we took our departure from the Hotel 
de Louvre. It is a most excellent and perfectly or- 
dered hotel, and I have not seen a more magnificent 
hall, in any palace, than the dining-saloon, with its 
profuse gilding, and its ceiling, painted in compart- 
ments ; so that when the chandeliers are all alight, it 
looks a fit place for princes to banquet in, and not 
very fit for the few Americans whom I saw scattered 
at its long tables. 

By the by, as we drove to the railway, we passed 
through the public square, where the Bastille formerly 
stood ; and in the centre of it now stands a column, 
surmounted by a golden figure of Mercury (I think), 
which seems to be just on the point of casting itself 
from a gilt ball into the air. This statue is so buoy- 
ant, that the spectator feels quite willing to trust it 
to the viewless element, being as sure that it would 
be borne up as that a bird would fly. 

Our first day's journey was wholly without interest, 
through a country entirely flat, and looking wretchedly 
brown and barren. There were rows of trees, very slen- 
2* c 



34 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

der, very prim and formal ; there was ice wherever 
there happened to be any water to form it ; there were 
occasional villages, compact little streets, or masses of 
stone or plastered cottages, very dirty and with gable 
ends and earthen roofs ; and a succession of this same 
landscape was all that we saw, whenever we rubbed 
away the congelation of our breath from the carriage 
windows. Thus we rode on, all day long, fi'om eleven 
o'clock, with hardly a five minutes' stop, till long after 
darkj^when we came to Dijon, where there was a half 
of twenty-five minutes for dinner. Then we set forth 
again, and rumbled forward, through cold and dark- 
ness without, until we reached Lyons at about ten 
o'clock. We left our luggage at the railway-station, 
and took an omnibus for the Hotel de Provence, which 
we chose at a venture, among a score of other hotels. 

As this hotel was a little off the direct route of the 
omnibus, the driver set us down at the corner of a 
street, and pointed to some lights, which he said 
designated the Hotel de Provence ; and thither we 
proceeded, all seven of us, taking along a few carpet- 
bags and shawls, our equipage for the night. The 
porter of the hotel met us near its doorway, and ush- 
ered us through an arch, into the inner quadrangle, and 
then up some old and worn steps, — very broad, and ap- 
pearing to be the principal staircase. At the first land- 
ing-place, an old woman and a waiter or two received 
us ; and we went up two or three more flights of the 
same broad and worn stone staircases. What we could 
see of the house looked very old, and had the musty 
odor with which I first became acquainted at Chester. 



1858.] FRANCE. 35 

After ascending to the proper level, we were con- 
ducted along a corridor, paved with octagonal earthen 
tiles; on one side were windows, looking into the 
court-yard, on the other doors opening into the sleep- 
ing-chambers. The corridor was of immense length, 
and seemed still to lengthen itself before us, as the 
glimmer of our conductor's candle went farther and 
farther into the obscurity. Our own chamber was at 
a vast distance along this passage ; those of the rest 
of the party were on the hither side ; but all this im- 
mense suite of rooms appeared to communicate by 
doors from one to another, like the chambers through 
which the reader wanders at midnight, in Mrs. Rad- 
clifFe's romances. And they were really splendid 
rooms, though of an old fashion, lofty, spacious, with 
floors of oak or other wood, inlaid in squares and 
crosses, and waxed till they were slippery, but with- 
out carpets. Our own sleeping-room had a deep fire- 
place, in which we ordered a fire, and asked if there 
were not some saloon already warmed, where we could 
get a cup of tea. 

Hereupon the waiter led us back along the endless 
corridor, and down the old stone staircases, and out 
into the quadrangle, and journeyed with us along an 
exterior arcade, and finally threw open the door of 
the salle d, manger, which proved to be a room of lofty 
height, with a vaulted roof, a stone floor, and interior 
spaciousness sufficient for a baronial hall, the whole 
bearing the same aspect of times gone by, that char- 
acterized the rest of the house. There were two or 
three tables covered with white cloth, and we sat 



36 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

down at one of them and had our tea. Finally we 
wended back to our sleeping-rooms, — a considerable 
journey, so endless seemed the ancient hotel. I 
should like to know its history. 

The fire made our great chamb^ look comfortable, 
and the fireplace threw out the heat better than the 
little sciuare hole over which we cowered in one 
saloon at the Hotel de Louvre 

In the morning we began our preparations for start- 
ing at ten. Issuing into the corridor, I found a sol- 
dier of the line, paxjing to and fro there as sentinel. 
Another was posted in another corridor, into which I 
wandered by mistake; another stood in the inner 
court-yard, and another at the porte-cochere. They 
were not there the night before, and I know not 
whence nor why they came, unless that some officer 
of rank may have taken up his quarters at the hotel. 
Miss M — — says she heard at Paris, that a consid- 
erable number of troops had recently been drawn 
together at Lyons, in consequence of symptoms of dis- 
affection that have recently shown themselves here. 

Before breakfast I went out to catch a momentary 
glimpse of the city. The street in which our hotel 
stands is near a large public square ; in the centre 
is a bronze equestrian statue of Louis XIV. ; and the 
square itself is called the Place de Louis le Grand. 
I wonder where this statue hid itself while the Revo- 
lution was raging in Lyons, and when the guillotine, 
perhaps, stood on that very spot. 

The square was surrounded by stately buildings, 
but had what seemed to be barracks for soldiers, — 



1858.] FJ5ANGE. 37 

at any rate, mean little huts, deforming its ample 
space ; and a soldier was on guard before the statue 
of Louis le Grande It was a cold, misty morning, 
and a fog lay throughout the area, so that I could 
gcarcely see from one side of it to the other. 

Keturning towards our hotel, I saw that it had an 
immense front, along which ran m gigantic letters, 
its title,— 

h6tel de provekce et des ambassadeues. 

The excellence of the hotel lay rather in the faded 
pomp of its sleeping-rooms, and the vastness of its 
Aalle ct manger, than in anything very good to eat or 
drink. 

We left it, after a poor breakfast, and went to the 
railway-station. Looking at the mountainous heap 
of our luggage the night before, we had missed a 
great carpet - bag ; and we now found that Miss 
M ---^.-. 's trunk had been substituted for it, and, 
there being the proper number of packages as regis- 
tered, it was impossible to convince the officials that 
anything was wrong. We, of course, began to gener- 
alize forthwith, and pronounce the incident to be 
characteristic of French morality. They love a cer- 
tain system and external correctness, but do not 
trouble themselves to be deeply in the right ; and 

Miss M suggested that there used to be parallel 

cases in the French Revolution, when, so long as the 
assigned number were sent out of prison to be guillo- 
tined, the jailer did uot much care whether they were 



38 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

the persons designated by the tribunal or not. At all 
events, we could get no satisfaction about the carpet- 
bag, and shall very probably be compelled to leave 
Marseilles without it. 

This day's ride was through a far more picturesque 
country than that we saw yesterday. Heights began 
to rise imminent above our way, with sometimes a 
ruined castle wall upon them; on our left, the rail- 
track kept close to the hills ; on the other side there 
was the level bottom of a valley, with heights de- 
scending upon it a mile or a few miles away. Far- 
ther off we could see blue hills, shouldering high 
above the intermediate ones, and themselves worthy 
to be called mountains. .These hills arranged them- 
selves in beautiful groups, affording openings between 
them, and vistas of what lay beyond, and gorges 
which I suppose held a great deal of romantic scenery. 
By and by a river made its appearance, flowing swiftly 
in the same direction that we were travelling, — a 
beautiful and cleanly river, with white pebbly shores, 
and itself of a peculiar blue. It rushed along very 
fast, sometimes whitening over shallow descents, and 
even in its calmer intervals its surface was all cov- 
ered with whirls and eddies, indicating that it dashed 
onward in haste. I do not now know the name of this 
river, but have set it down as the ** Arrowy Rhone." 
It kept us company a long while, and I think we did 
not part with it as long as daylight remained. I 
have seldom seen hill-scenery that struck me more 
than some that we saw to-day, and the old feudal 
towers and old villages at their feet; and the old 



1858.] FRANCE. 39 

churches, with spires shaped just like extinguishers, 
gave it an interest accumulating from many centuries 
past. 

Still going southward, the vineyards began to bor- 
der our track, together with what I at first took to be 
orchards, but soon found were plantations of olive- 
trees, which grow to a much larger size than I sup- 
posed, and look almost exactly like very crabbed and 
eccentric apple-trees. Neither they nor the vineyards 
add anything to the picturesqueness of the landscape. 

On the whole, I should have been delighted with all 
this scenery if it had not looked so bleak, barren, brown, 
and bare ; so like the wintry New England before the 
snow has fallen. It was very cold, too ; ice along the 
borders of streams, even among the vineyards and 
olives. The houses are of rather a different shape 
here than farther northward, their roofs being not 
nearly so sloping. They are almost invariably covered 
with white plaster ; the farm-houses have their out- 
buildings in connection with the dwelling, — the whole 
surrounding three sides of a quadrangle. 

We travelled far into the night, swallowed a cold 
and hasty dinner at Avignon, and reached Marseilles 
sorely wearied, at about eleven o'clock. We took a 
cab to the Hotel d'Angleterre (two cabs, to be quite 
accurate), and find it a very poor place. 

To go back a little, as the sun went down, we 
looked out of the window of our railway-carriage, and 
saw a sky that reminded us of w^hat we used to see 
day after day in America, and what we have not seen 
since ; and, after sunset, the horizon burned and 



40 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

glowed with rich crimson and orange lustre, looking 
at once warm and cold. After it gi-ew dark, the stars 

brightened, and Miss M from her windovv pointed 

out some of the planets to the children, she being as 
familiar with them as a gardener with his flowers. 
They were as bright as diamonds. 

We had a wretched breakfast, and J and I 

then went to the railway-station to see about our lug- 
gage. On our walk back we went astray, passing by 
a triumphal arch, erected by the Marsellaise, in honor 
of Louis Napoleon ; but we inquired our way of old 
women and soldiers, who were very kind and cour- 
teous, — especially the latter, — and were directed 
aright. We came to a large, oblong, public place, 
set with trees, but devoid of grass, like all public 
places in France. In^the middle of it was a bronze 
statue of an ecclesiastical personage, stretching forth 
his hands in the attitude of addressing the people or 
of throwing a benediction over them. It was some 
archbishop, who had distinguished himself by his 
humanity and devotedness during the plague of 1 720. 
At the moment of our arrival the piazza was quite 
thronged with people, who seemed to be talking 
amongst themselves with considerable earnestness, 
although without any actual excitement. They were 
smoking cigars ; and we judged that they were only 
loitering here for the sake of the sunshine, having no 
fires at home, and nothing to do. Some looked like 
gentlemen, others like peasants ; most of them I 
should have taken for the lazzaroni of this Southern 
city, — men with cloth caps, like the classic liberty- 



1858.] FRAJ^CE, 41 

cap, or with wide-awake hats. There were one or two 
women of the lower classes, without bonnets, the elder 
ones with white caps, the younger bareheaded. I 
have hardly seen a lady in Marseilles ; and I suspect, 
it being a commercial city, and dirty to the last de- 
gree, ill-built, narrow-streeted, and sometimes pestilen- 
tial, there are few or no families of gentility resident 
here. 

Returning to the hotel, we found the rest of the 
party ready to go out ; so we all issued forth in a 
body, and inquired our way to the telegraph-office, in 
order to send my message about the carpet-bag. In 
a street through which we had to pass (and which 
seemed to be the Exchange, or its precincts), there was 
a crowd even denser, yes, much denser, than that 
which we saw in the square of the archbishop's 
statue ; and each man was talking to his neighbor in 
a vivid, animated way, as if business were very brisk 
to-day. 

At the telegraph-office, we discovered the cause that 
had brought out these many people. There had been 
attempts on the Emperor's life, ■ — unsuccessful, as 
they seem fated to be, though some mischief was done 
to those near him. I rather think the good people of 
Marseilles were glad of the attempt, as an item of news 
and gossip, and did not very greatly care whether it 
were successful or no. It seemed to have roused their 
vivacity rather than their interest. The only account 
I have seen of it was in the brief public despatch from 
the Syndic (or whatever he be) of Paris to the chief 
authority of Marseilles, which was printed and posted 



42 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

in various conspicuous places. The only chance of 
knowing the truth with any fulness of detail would be 
to come across an English paper. We have had a 
banner hoisted half-mast in front of our hotel to-day 
as a token, the head-waiter tells me, of sympathy 
and sorrow for the General and other persons who 
were slain by this treasonable attempt. 

J and I now wandered by ourselves along a 

circular line of quays, having, on one side of us, a 
thick forest of masts, while, on the other, was a sweep 
of shops, book-stalls, sailors' restaurants and drinking- 
houses, fruit-sellers, candy-women, and all manner of 
open-air dealers and pedlers ; little children playing, 
and jumping the rope, and such a babble and bustle 
as I never saw or heard before ; the sun lying along 
the whole sweep, very hot, and evidently very grate- 
ful to those who basked in it. Whenever I passed 
into the shade, immediately from too warm I became 
too cold. The sunshine was like hot air ; the shade, 
like the touch of cold steel, — sharp, hard, yet exhil- 
arating. From the broad street of the quays, narrow, 
thread-like lanes pierced up between the edifices, call- 
ing themselves streets, yet so narrow, that a person in 
the middle could almost touch the houses on either 
hand. They ascended steeply, bordered on each sid6 
by long, contiguous walls of high houses, and from the 
time of their first being built, could never have had 
a gleam of sunshine in them, — always in shadow, 
always unutterably nasty, and often pestiferous. The 
nastiness which I saw in Marseilles exceeds my here- 
tofore experience. There is dirt in the hotel, and 



1858.] THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA. 43 

everywhere else ; and it evidently troubles nobody, 
— no more than if all the people were pigs in a 

pigsty 

Passing by all this sweep of quays, J and I 

ascended to an elevated walk, overlooking the harbor, 
and far beyond it ; for here we had our first view of 
the Mediterranean, blue as heaven, and bright with 
sunshine. It was a bay, widening forth into the open 
deep, and bordered with height, and bold, picturesque 
headlands, some of which had either fortresses or 
convents on them. Several boats and one brig were 
under sail, making their way towards the port. I 
have never seen a finer sea-view. Behind the town, 
there seemed to be a mountainous landscape, imper- 
fectly visible, in consequence of the intervening edi- 
fices. 

THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA. 

Steamer ^^ Calahrese^^ January \1th. — If I had 
remained at Marseilles, I might have found many 
peculiarities and characteristics of that Southern city 
to notice ; but I fear that these will not be recorded 
if I leave them till I touch the soil of Italy. Indeed, 
I doubt whether there be anything really worth 
recording in the little distinctions between one nation 
and another ; at any rate, after the first novelty is 
over, new things seem equally commonplace with the 
old. There is but one little interval when the mind 
is in such a state that it can catch the fleeting aroma 
of a new scene. And it is always so much pleasanter 
to enjoy this delicious newness than to attempt arrest- 



44 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

ing it, that it requires great force of will to insist with 
one's self upon sitting down to write. I can do nothing 
with Marseilles, especially here on the Mediterranean, 
long after nightfall, and when the steamer is pitch- 
ing in a pretty lively way. 

(Later.) — I walked out with J yesterday 

morning, and reached the outskirts of the city, 
whence we could see the bold and picturesque heights 
that surround Marseilles as with a semicircular wall. 
They rise into peaks, and the town, being on their 
lower slope, descends from them towards the sea with 
k gradual sweep. Adown the streets that descend 
these declivities come little rivulets, running along 
over the pavement, close to the sidewalks, as over a 
pebbly bed • and though they look vastly like kennels, 
I saw women washing linen in these streams, and oth' 
ers dipping up the water for household purposes. 
The women appear very much in public at Marseilles. 
In the squares and places you see half a dozen of them 
together, sitting in a social circle on the bottoms of 
upturned baskets, knitting, talking, and enjoying the 
public j^unshine, as if it were their own household fire. 
Not one in a thousand of them, probably, ever has a 
household fire for the purpose of keeping themselvei 
warm, but only to do their little cookery ; and when 
there is sunshine they take advantage of it, and in the 
short season of rain and frost they shrug their shoul- 
ders, put on what warm garments they have, and get 
through the winter somewhat as gi'asshoppers and 
butterflies do, — being summer insects like them. 
This certainly is a very keen and cutting air, sharp 



18r>8.] THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA 45 

as a razor, and I saw ice along the borders of the 
little rivulets almost at noonday. To be sure, it is 
mid-winter, and yet in the sunshine I found myself 
uncomfortably warm, but in the shade the air was 
like the touch of death itself. I do not like the cli- 
mate. 

There are a great number of public places in Mar- 
seilles, several of which are adorned with statues or 
fountains, or triumphal arches or columns, and set 
out with trees, and otherwise furnished as a kind of 
drawing-rooms, where the populace may meet together 
and gossip. I never before heard from human lips 
anything like this bustle and babble, this thousand- 
fold talk which you hear all round about you in the 
crowd of a public square; so entirely different is it 
from the dulness of a crowd in England, where, as a 
rule, everybody is silent, and hardly half a dozen mon- 
osyllables will come from the lips of a thousand people. 
In Marseilles, on the contrary, a stream of unbroken 
talk seems to bubble from the lips of every individual. 
A great many interesting scenes take place in these 
squares. From the window of our hotel (which looked 
into the Place Royal) I saw a juggler displaying his 
art to a crowd, who stood in a regular square about 
him, none pretending to press nearer than the pre- 
scribed limit. While the juggler wrought his miracles 
his wife supplied him with his magic materials out of 
a box ; and when the exhibition was over she packed 
up the white cloth with which his table was covered, 
together with cups, cards, balls, and whatever else, 
and they took their depai'ture. 



46 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

I have been struck with the idle curiosity, and, at 
the same time, the courtesy and kindness of the 
populace of Marseilles, and I meant to exemplify it by 

recording how Miss S and I attracted their notice, 

and became the centre of a crowd of at least fifty of 
them while doing no more remarkable thing than 
settling with a cab-driver. But really this pitch and 
swell is getting too bad, and I shall go to bed, as the 
best chance of keeping myself in an equable state. 



ROME. 

37 Palazzo Larazani, Via PoHa Pi7iciana, Janu- 
ary lUh. — We left Marseilles in the NeapoHtan 
steamer " Calabrese," as noticed above, a week ago this 
morning. There was no fault to be found with the 
steamer, which w^as very clean and comfortable, con- 
trary to what we had understood beforehand ; except 
for the coolness of the air (and I know not that this 
was greater than that of the Atlantic in July), our 
voyage would have been very pleasant ; but for myself, 
I enjoyed nothing, having a cold upon me, or a low 
fever, or something else that took the light and warmth 
out of everything. 

I went to bed immediately after my last record, and 
was rocked to sleep pleasantly enough by the billows 
of the Mediterranean ; and, coming on deck about 
sunrise next morning, found the steamer approaching 
Genoa. We saw the city, lying at the foot of a range 
of hills, and stretching a little way up their slopes, 
the hills sweeping round it in the segment of a circle, 



1858.] ITALY. 47 

and looking like an island rising abruptly out of the 
sea ; for no connection with the mainland was visible 
on either [side. There was snow scattered on their 
summits and streaking their sides a good way down. 
They looked bold, and barren, and brown, except where 
the snow whitened them. The city did not impress 
me with much expectation of size or splendor. Short- 
ly after coming into the port our whole party landed, 
and we found ourselves at once in the midst of a crowd 
of cab-drivers, hotel-runners, and commissionaires, who 
assaulted us with a volley of French, Italian, and 
broken English, which beat pitilessly about our ears ; 
for really it seemed as if all the dictionaries in the 
world had been torn to pieces, and blown around us 
by a hurricane. Such a pother ! We took a commis- 
sionaire, a respectable-looking man, in a cloak, who 
said his name was Salvator Rosa ; and he engaged to 
show ug whatever was interesting in Genoa. 

In the first place, he took us through narrow streets 
to an old church, the name of which I have forgotten, 
and, indeed, its peculiar features ; but I know that I 
found it pre-eminently magnificent, — its whole interi- 
or being incased in polished marble, of various kinds 
and colors, its ceiling painted, and its chapels adorned 
with pictures. However, this church was dazzled out 
of sight by the Cathedral of San Lorenzo, to which we 
were afterwards conducted, whose exterior front is 
covered with alternate slabs of black and white mar- 
ble, which were brought, either in whole or in part, 
from Jerusalem. Within, there was a prodigious rich- 
ness of precious marbles, and a pillarj if I mistake not, 



48 FEENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

from Solomon's Temple ; and a picture of the Virgin 
by St. Luke ; and others (rather more intrinsically 
valuable, I imagine), by old masters, set in superb 
marble frames, within the arches of the chapels. I 
used to try to imagine how the English cathedrals 
must have looked in their primeval glory, before the 
Reformation, and before the whitewash of Cromwell's 
time had overlaid their marble pillars ; but I never 
imagined anything at all approaching what my eyes 
now beheld : this sheen of polished and variegated 
marble covering every inch of its walls ; this glow of 
brilliant frescos all over the roof, and up within the 
domes ; these beautiful pictures by great masters, 
painted for the places which they now occupied, and 
making an actual portion of the edifice ; this wealth 
of silver, gold, and gems, that adorned the shrines of 
the saints, before which wax candles burned, and were 
kept burning, I suppose, from year's end to year's 
end ; in short, there is no imagining nor remembering 
a hundredth part of the rich details. And even the 
Cathedral (though I give it up as indescribable) was 
nothing at all in comparison with a church to which 
the commissionaire afterwards led us ; a church that 
had been built four or five hundred years ago, by a 
pirate, in expiation of his sins, and out of the profit of 
his rapine. This last edifice, in its interior, absolutely 
shone with burnished gold, and glowed with pictures ; 
its walls were a quarry of precious stones, so valuable 
were the marbles out of wJiich they were wrought ; its 
columns and pillars were of inconceivable costliness ; 
its pavement was a mosaic of wonderful beauty, and 



1858.] ITALY. « 49 

there were four twisted pillars made out of stalactites. 
Perhaps the best way to form some dim conception of 
it is to fancy a little casket, inlaid inside with precious 
stones, so that there shall not a hair's-breadth be left 
unprecious-stoned, and then to conceive this little bit 
of a casket increased to the magnitude of a great 
church, without losing anything of the excessive glory 
that was compassed into its original small compass, 
but all its pretty lustre made sublime by the conse- 
quent immensity. At any rate, nobody who has not 
seen a church like this can imagine what a gorgeous 
religion it was that reared it. 

In the Cathedral, and in all the churches, we saw 
priests and many persons kneeling at their devotions ; 
and our Salvator Rosa, whenever we passed a chapel 
or shrine, failed not to touch the pavement with one 
knee, crossing himself the while ; and once, when a 
priest was going through some form of devotion, he 
stopped a few moments to share in it. 

He conducted us, too, to the Balby Palace, the 
stateliest and most sumptuous residence, but not more 
so than another which he afterwards showed us, nor 
perhaps than many others which exist in Genoa, The 
Superb. The painted ceilings in these palaces are 
a glorious adornment ; the walls of the saloons, in- 
crusted with various-colored marbles, give an idea of 
splendor which I never gained from anything else. 
The floors, laid in mosaic, seem too precious to tread 
upon. In the royal palace, many of the floors were 
of various woods, inlaid by an English artist, and they 
looked like a magnification of some exquisite piece of 

VOL. I. 3 D 



50 WIENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

Tunbridge ware ; but, in all respects, this palace was 
inferior to others which we saw. I say nothing of the 
immense pictorial treasures which hung upon the 
walls of all the rooms through which we passed ; for 
I soon grew so weary of admirable things, that I 
could neither enjoy nor understand them. My recep- 
tive faculty is very limited, and when the utmost of 
its small capacity is full, I become perfectly miserable, 
and the more so the better worth seeing are the 
things I am forced to reject. I do not know a greater 
misery ; to see sights, after such repletion, is to the mind 
what it would be to the body to have dainties forced 
down the throat long after the appetite was satiated. 

All this while, whenever we emerged into the vault- 
like streets, we were wretchedly cold. The commis- 
sionaire took us to a sort of pleasure-garden, occupying 
the ascent of a hill, and presenting seven different 
views of the city, from as many stations. One <^ the 
objects pointed out to us was a large yellow house, on 
a hillside, in the outskirts of Genoa, which was 
formerly inhabited for six months by Charles Dickens. 
Looking down from the elevated part of the pleasure- 
gardens, we saw orange-trees beneath us, with the 
golden fruit hanging upon them, though their trunks 
were muffled in straw ; and, still lower down, there 
was ice and snow. 

Gladly (so far as I myself was concerned) we dis- 
missed the commissionaire, after he had brought us 
to the hotel of the Cross of Malta, where we dined ; 
needlessly, as it proved, for another dinner awaited us, 
«,fter our return on board the boat. 



1858.] ITALY. 51 

We feet sail for Leghorn before dark, and I retired 
early, feeling still more ill from my cold than the 
night before. The next morning we Were in the 
crowded port of Leghorn. We all went ashore, with 
some idea of taking the rail for Pisa, which is within 
an hour's distance, and might have been seen in 
time for our departure with the steamer. But a 
necessary visit to a banker's, and afterwards some 
unnecessary formalities about our passports, kept us 
wandering through the streets nearly all day j and we 
saw nothing in the slightest degree interesting, except 
the tomb of Smollett, in the burial-place attached to 
the English Chapel. It is surrounded by an iron 
railhig, and marked by a slender obelisk of white 
marble, the pattern of which is many times repeated 
'over surrounding graves. 

We went into a Jewish synagogue, -— the interior 
cased in marbles, and surrounded with galleries, 
resting upon arches above arches. There were lights 
burning at the altar, and it looked very like a 
Christian church j but it was dirty, and had an odor 
not of sanctity. 

In Leghorn, as everywhere else, we were chilled to 
the heart, except when the sunshine fell directly upon 
us ; and we returned to the steamer with a feeling as 
if we were getting back to our home ; for this life of 
wandering makes a three days' residence in one place 
seem like home. 

We found several new passengers on board, and 
among others a monk, in a long brown frock of 
woollen cloth, with an immense cape, and a little 



52 FREI'^CH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [lS58. 

black covering over his tonsure. He was a tall figure, 
with a gray beard, and might have walked, just as he 
stood, out of a picture by one of the old masters. 
This holy person addressed me very affably in Italian ; 
but we found it impossible to hold much conversation. 

The evening was beautiful, with a bright young 
moonlight, not yet sufficiently powerful to overwhelm 

the stars, and as we walked the deck, Miss M 

showed the children the constellations, and told their 

names. J made a slight mistake as to one of 

them, pointing it out to me as " O'Brien's belt ! " 

Elba was presently in view, and we might have 
seen many other interesting points, had it not been 
for our steamer's practice of resting by day, and 
only pursuing its voyage by night. The next morning 
we found ourselves in the harbor of Civita Vecchia, 
and, going ashore with our luggage, went through a 
blind turmoil with custom-house officers, inspectors of 
passports, soldiers, and vetturino people. My wife 
and I strayed a little through Civita Vecchia, and 
found its streets narrow, like clefts in a rock (which 
seems to be the fashion of Italian towns), and smelling 
nastily. I had made a bargain with a vetturino to 
send us to Kome in a carriage, with four horses, in 
eight hours ; and as soon as the custom-house and 
passport people would let us, we started, lumbering 
slowly along with our mountain of luggage. We had 
heard rumors of robberies lately committed on this 
route ; especially of a Nova Scotia bishop, who was 
detained on the road an hour and a half, and utterly 
pillaged j and certainly there was not a single mile of 



1858.] ITALY. 63 

the dreary and desolate country over which we passed, 
where we might not have been robbed and murdered 
with impunity. Now and then, at long distances, we 
came to a structure that was either a prison, a tavern, 
or a barn, but did not look very much like either, 
being strongly built of stone, with iron-grated windows, 
and of ancient and rusty aspect. We kept along by 
the sea-shore a great part of the way, and stopped to 
feed our horses at a village, the wretched street of 
which stands close along the shore of the Mediterranean, 
its loose, dark sand being made nasty by the vicinity. 
The vetturino cheated us, one of the horses giving out, 
as he must have known it would do, half-way on our 
jouraey ; and we staggered on through cold and dark- 
ness, and peril, too, if the banditti were not a myth, — 
reaching Rome not much before midnight. I perpe- 
trated unheard-of briberies on the custom-house officers 
at the gates, and was permitted to pass through and es- 
tablish myself at Spillman's Hotel, the only one where 
we could gain admittance, and where we have been 
half frozen, and have continued so ever since. 
And this is sunny Italy, and genial Rome ! 

Palazzo Larazani, Via Porta Pinciani, February 
Sd. — We have been in Rome a fortnight to-day, or 
rather at eleven o'clock to-night ; and I have seldom 
or never spent so wretched a time anywhere. Our 
impressions were very unfortunate, arriving at mid- 
night, half frozen in the wintry rain, and being re- 
ceived into a cold and cheerless hotel, where we 
shivered during two or three days ; meanwhile seeking 



54 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

lodgings among the sunless, dreary alleys which are 
called streets in Home. One cold, bright day after 
another has pierced me to the heart, and cut me in 
twain as with a sword, keen and sharp, and poisoned 
at point and edge. I did not think that cold weather 
could have made me so very miserable. Having 
caught a feverish influenza, I was really glad of being 
muffled up comfortably in the fever heat. The atmos^ 
phere certainly has a peculiar quality of malignity. 
After a day or two we settled ourselves in a suite of 
ten rooms, comprehending one flat, or what is called 
the second piano of this house. The rooms, thus far, 
have been very uncomfortable, it being impossible to 
w^arm them by means of the deep, old-fashioned, in- 
artificial fireplaces, unless we had the great logs of a 
New England forest to burn in them ; so I have sat 
in my corner by the fireside with more clothes on 
than I ever wore before, and my thickest great-coafc 
over all. In the middle of the day I generally ven- 
ture out for an hour or two, but have only once been 
warm enough even in the sunshine, and out of the 
sun never at any time. I understand now the force 
of that story of Diogenes when he asked the Con- 
queror, as the only favor he could do him, to stand 
out of his sunshine, there being svicli a diff'erence 
in these Southern climes of Europe between sun and 
shade. If my wits had not been too much congealed, 
and my fingers too numb, I should like to have kept 
a minute journal of my feelings and impressions 
during the past fortnight. It would have shown 
modern Eome in an aspect in which it has never yet 



1858.] ITALY. 55 

been depicted. But I have now grown somewhat ac- 
climated, and the first freshness of my discomfort has 
worn off, so that I shall never be able to express how 
I dislike the place, and how wretched I have been in 
it ; and soon, I suppose, warmer weather will come, 
and perhaps reconcile me to Rome against my will. 
Cold, narrow lanes, between tall, ugly, mean-looking 
whitewashed houses, sour bread, pavements most un- 
comfortable to the feet, enormous prices for poor 
living; beggars, pickpockets, ancient ^temples and 
broken monuments, and clothes hanging to dry about 
them ; French soldiers, monks, and priests of every 
degree ; a shabby population, smoking bad cigars, — 
these would have been some of the points of my 
description. Of course there are better and truer 
things to be said 

It would be idle for me to attempt any sketches of 
these famous sites and edifices, - — St. Peter's, for ex- 
ample, — which have been described by a thousand 
people, though none of them have ever given me an 
idea of what sort of place Rome is 

The Coliseum was very much what I had precon- 
ceived it, though I was not prepared to find it turned 
into a sort of Christian church, with a pulpit on the 
verge of the open space. .... The French soldiers, 
who keep guard within it, as in other public places in 
Rome, have an excellent (opportunity to secure the 
welfare of their souls. 

February 1th. — I cannot get fairly into the current 
of my journal since we arrived, and already I per- 
ceive that the nice peculiarities of Roman life are 



56 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

passing from my notice before I have recorded them. 
It is a very great pity. During the past week I have 
plodded daily, for an hour or two, through the 
narrow, stony streets, that look worse than the worst 
backside lanes of any other city ; indescribably ugly 
and disagreeable they are, .... without sidewalks, 
but provided with a line of larger square stones, set 
crosswise to each other, along which there is some- 
what less uneasy walking. .... Ever and anon, 
even in the meanest streets, — though, generally speak- 
ing, one can hardly be called meaner than another, — 
we pass a palace, extending far along the narrow way 
on a line with the other houses, but distinguished by 
its architectural windows, iron-barred on the base- 
ment story, and by its portal arch, through which we 
have glimpses, sometimes of a dirty court-yard, or 
perhaps of a clean, ornamented one, with trees, a 
colonnade, a fountain, and a statue in the vista ; 
though, more likely, it resembles the entrance to 
a stable, and may, perhaps, really be one. The 
lower regions of palaces come to strange uses in 

Rome In the basement story of the Bar- 

berini Palace a regiment of French soldiers (or sol- 
diers of some kind *) seems to be quartered, while no 
doubt princes have magnificent domiciles above. Be 
it palace or whatever other dwelling, the inmates 
climb through rubbish often to the comforts, such as 
they may be, that await them above. I vainly try to 
get down upon paper the dreariness, the ugliness, 

* We find them to be retainers of the Barberini family, not 
French. 



1858.] ITALY. 57 

shabbiness, un-home-likeness of a Roman street. It is 
also to be said that you cannot go far in any direction 
without coming to a piazza, which is sometimes little 
more than a widening and enlarging of the dingy 
street, with the lofty fagade of a church or basilica 
on one side, and a fountain in the centre, where the 
water squirts out of some fantastic piece of sculpture 
into a great stone basin. These fountains are often 

of immense size and most elaborate design 

There are a great many of these fountain-shapes, 
constructed under the orders of one pope or another, 
in all parts of the city ; and only the very simplest, 
such as a jet springing from a broad marble or por- 
phyiy vase, and falling back into it again, are really 
ornamental. If an antiquary were to accompany me 
through the streets, no doubt he would point out ten 
thousand interesting objects that I now pass over 
unnoticed, so general is the surface of plaster and 
whitewash; but often I can see fragments of antiq- 
uity built into the walls, or perhaps a church that 
was a Roman temple, or a basement of ponderous 
stones that were laid above twenty centuries ago. 
It is strange how our ideas of what antiquity is be- 
come altered here in Rome ; the sixteenth century, in 
which many of the churches and fountains seem to 
have been built or re-edified, seems close at hand, 
even like our own days ; a thousand years, or the 
days of the latter empire, is but a modern date, and 
scarcely interests us ; and nothing is really venerable 
of a more recent epoch than the reign of Constantino. 
And the Egyptian obelisks that stand in several of 

3* 



68 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

the piazzas put even the Augustan or Republican 
antiquities to shame. I remember reading in a New 
York newspaper an account of one of the public 
buildings of that city, — a relic of "the olden time," 
the writer called it; for it was erected in 1825! I 
am glad I saw the castles and Gothic churches and 
cathedrals of England before visiting Rome, or I never 
could have felt that delightful reverence for their 
gray and ivy-hung antiquity after seeing these so 
much older remains. But, indeed, old things are not 
so beautiful in this dry climate and clear atmosphere 

as in moist England 

Whatever beauty there may be in a Roman ruin 
is the remnant of what was beautiful originally ; 
whereas an English ruin is more beautiful often in 
its decay than even it was in its primal strength. 
If we ever build such noble structures as these 
Roman ones, we can have just as good ruins, after 
two thousand years, in the United States ; but we 
never can have a Furness Abbey or a Kenilworth. 
The Corso, and perhaps some other streets, does not 
deserve all the vituperation which I have bestowed 
on the generality of Roman vias, though the Corso 
is narrow, not averaging more than nine paces, if so 
much, from sidewalk to sidewalk. But palace after 
palace stands along almost its whole extent, — not, 
however, that they make such architectural show on 
the street as palaces should. The enclosed courts 
were perhaps the only parts of these edifices which 
the founders cared to enrich architecturally, I think 
Linlithgow Palace, of which I saw the ruins during my 



1858.] ITALY. 59 

last tour in Scotland, was built by an architect who 
had studied these Roman palaces. There was never 
any idea of domestic comfort, or of what we include 
in the name of home, at all implicated in such struct- 
ures, they being generally built by wifeless and 
childless churchmen for the display of pictures and 
statuary in galleries and long suites of rooms. 

I have not yet fairly begun the sight-seeing of 
Rome. I have been four or five times to St. Peter's, 
and always with pleasure, because there is such a 
delightful, summer-like warmth the moment we pass 
beneath the heavy, padded leather curtains that 
protect the entrances. It is almost impossible not to 
believe that this genial temperature is the result of 
furnace-heat, but, really, it is the warmth of last sum- 
mer, which will be included within those massive 
walls, and in that vast immensity of space, till, six 
months hence, this winter's chill will just have made 
its way thither. It would be an excellent plan for a 
valetudinarian to lodge during the winter in St. 
Peter's, perhaps establishing his household in one 
cf the papal tombs. I become, I think, more sensible 
of the size of St. Peter's, but am as yet far from 
being overwhelmed by it. It is not, as one expects, 
so big as all out o' doors, nor is its dome so immense 
as that of the firmament. It looked queer, however, 
the other day, to see a little ragged boy, the very 
least of human things, going round and kneeling at 
shrine after shrine, and a group of children standing 

on tiptoe to reach the vase of holy water 

On coming out of St. Peter's at my last visit, I saw 



60 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

a great sheet of ice around the fountain on the right 
hand, and some little Romans awkwardly sliding on 
it. I, too, took a slide, just for the sake of doing 
what I never thought to do in Rome. This in- 
clement weather, I should suppose, must make the 
whole city very miserable ; for the native Romans, I 
am told, never keep any fire, except for culinary pur- 
poses, even in the severest winter. They flee from 
their cheerless houses into the open air, and bring 
their firesides along with them in the shape of small 
earthen vases, or pipkins, with a handle by which 
they carry them up and down the streets, and so 
warm at least their hands with the lighted charcoal. 
I have had glimpses through open doorways into 
interiors, and saw them as dismal as tombs. Wher- 
ever I pass my summers, let me spend my winters in 
a cold country. 

We went yesterday to the Pantheon 

When I first came to Rome, I felt embarrassed and 
unwilling to pass, with my heresy, between a devotee 
and his saint ; for they often shoot their prayers at a 
shrine almost quite across the church. But there 
seems to be no violation of etiquette in so doing. A 
woman begged of us in the Pantheon, and accused 

my wife of impiety for not giving her an alms 

People of very decent appearance are often unexpect- 
edly converted into beggars as you approach them; 
but in general they take a " No " at once. 

February 9th. — For three or four days it has been 
cloudy and rainy, which is the greater pity, as this 
should be the gayest and merriest part of the Carni- 



1858.] ITALY. 61 

val. I go out but little, — yesterday only as far as 
Pakenhani's and Hooker's bank in the Piazza di 
Spagna, when I read Galignani and the American 
papers. At last, after seeing in England more of my 
fellow-compatriots than ever before, I really am dis- 
joined from my country. 

To-day I walked out along the Pincian Hill 

As the clouds still threatened rain, I deemed it my 
gatest course to go to St. Peter's for refuge. Heavy 
and dull as the day was, the effect of this great world 
of a church was still brilliant in the interior, as if it 
nad a sunshine of its own, as well as its own temper- 
ature ; and, by and by, the sunshine of the outward 
world came through the windows, hundreds of feet 

aloft, and fell upon the beautiful inlaid pavement 

Against a pillar, on one side of the nave, is a mosaic 
copy of Kaphael's Transfiguration, fitly framed within 
a great arch of gorgeous marble ; and, no doubt, the 
indestructible mosaic has preserved it far more com- 
pletely than the fading and darkening tints in which 
the artist painted it. At any rate, it seemed to me 
the one glorious picture that I have ever seen. The 
pillar nearest the great entrance, on the left of the 
nave, supports the monument to the Stuart family, 
where two winged figures, with inverted torches, stand 
on either side of a marble door, which is closed 
forever. It is an impressive monument, for you feel 
as if the last of the race had passed through that 
door. 

Emerging from the church, I saw a French ser- 
geant drilling his men in the piazza. These French 



63 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1856. 

soldiers are prominent objects everywhere about the 
city, and make up more of its sight and sound than 
anything else that lives. They stroll about individu- 
ally ) they pace as sentinels in all the public places ; 
and they march up and down in squads, companies, 
and battalions, always with a very great din of drum, 
fife, and trumpet ; ten times the proportion of musio 
that the same number of men would require elsewhere ; 
and it reverberates with ten times the noise, between 
the high edifices of these lanes, that it could make 
in broader streets. Nevertheless, I have no quarrel 
with the French soldiers; they are fresh, healthy, 
smart, honest-looking young fellows enough, in blue 
coats and red trousers ; . . . . and, at all events, they 
serve as an efficient police, making Rome as safe as 
London ; whereas, without them, it would very likely 
be a den of banditti. 

On my way home I saw a few tokens of the Car- 
nival, which is now in full progress ; though, as it wa» 
only about one o'clock, its frolics had not commenced 

for the day I question whether the Roman* 

themselTes take any great interest in the Carnival 
The balconies along the Corso were almost entirely 
taken by English and Americans, or other foreigners. 

As I approached the bridge of St. Angelo, I saw 
several persons engaged, as I thought, in fishing in 
the Tiber, with very strong lines ; but on drawing 
nearer I found that they were trying to hook up the 
branches, and twigs, and other drift-wood, which the 
recent rains might have swept into the river. There 
was a little heap of what looked chiefly like willow 



1858.] ITALY. 63 

twigs, the poor result of their labor. The hook was a 
knot of wood, with the lopped-ofF branches projecting 
in three or four prongs. The Tiber has always the 
hue of a mud-puddle ; but now, after a heavy rain 
which has washed the clay into it, it looks like pease- 
soup. It is a broad and rapid stream, eddying along 
as if it were in haste to disgorge its impurities into 
the sea. On the left side, where the city mostly is 
situated, the buildings hang directly over the stream ; 
on the other, where stand the Castle of St. Angelo 
and the Church of St. Peter, the town does not press 
so imminent upon the shore. The banks are clayey, 
and look as if the river had been digging them away 
for ages ; but I believe its bed is higher than of yore. 

February \^th. — -I went out to-day, and, going 
along the Via Felice and the Via delle Quattro Fon- 
tane, came unawares to the Basilica of Santa Maria 
Maggiore, on the summit of the Esquiline Hill. I en- 
tered it, without in the least knowing what church 
it was, and found myself in a broad and noble nave, 
both very simple and very grand. There was a long 
row of Ionic columns of marble, twenty or thereabouts 
on each side, supporting a flat roof. There were 
vaulted side-aisles, and, at the farther end, a bronze 
canopy over the high altar ; and all along the length 
of the side-aisles, were shrines with pictures, sculp- 
ture, and burning lamps ; the whole church, too, was 
lined with marble : the roof was gilded ; and yet the 
.general effect of seve^re and noble simplicity triumphed 
over all the ornament. I should have taken it for a 
Eonian temple, retaining nearly its pristine aspect ^ 



64 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

but Murray tells us that it was founded a. d. 342 by 
Pope Liberius, on the spot precisely marked out by a 
miraculous fall of snow, in the month of August, and 
it has undergone many alterations since his time. 
But it is very fine, and gives the beholder the idea of 
vastness, which seems harder to attain than anything 
else. On the right hand, approaching the high altar, 
there is a chapel, separated from the rest of the 
church by an iron paling ; and, being admitted into it 
with another party, I found it most elaborately mag- 
nificent. But one magnificence outshone another, and 
made itself the brightest conceivable for the moment. 
However, this chapel was as rich as the most precious 
marble could make it, in pillars and pilasters, and 
broad, polished slabs, covering the whole walls (except 
where there were splendid and glowing frescos ; or 
where some monumental statuary or bas-relief, or 
mosaic picture filled up an arched nich&). Its archi- 
tecture was a dome, resting on four great arches ; 
and in size it would alone have been a church. In the 
centre of the mosaic pavement there was a flight of 
steps, down which we went, and saw a group in mar- 
ble, representing the nativity of €hrist, which, judging 
by the unction with which our guide talked about it, 
must have been of peculiar sanctity. I hate to leave 
this chapel and church, without being able to say any 
one thing that may reflect a portion of their beauty, 
or of the feeling which they excite. Kneeling against 
many of the pillars there were persons in prayer, and 
I stepped softly, fearing lest my tread on the marble 
pavement should disturb them, — a needless precau- 



1858.] ITALY. 65 

tion, however, for nobody seems to expect it, nor to 
be disturbed by the lack of it. 

The situation of the church, I should suppose, is 
the loftiest in Rome : it has a fountain at one end, 
and a column at the other ; but I did not pay par- 
ticular attention to either, nor to the exterior of the 
church itself. 

On my return, I turned aside from the Via delle 
Quattro Fontane into the Via Quirinalis, and was led 
by it into the Piazza di Monte Cavallo. The street 
through which I passed was broader, cleanlier, and 
statelier than most streets in Rome, and bordered by 
palaces ; and the piazza had noble edifices around it, 
and a fountain, an obelisk, and two nude statues in 
the centre. The obelisk was, as the inscription indi- 
cated, a relic of Egypt ; the basin of the fountain was 
an immense bowl of Oriental granite, into which 
poured a copious flood of water, discolored by the 
rain ; the statues were colossal, — two beautiful young 
men, each holding a fiery steed. On the pedestal of 
one was the inscription, Opus Phidi^e ; on the other, 
Opus Praxitelis. What a city is this, when one may 
stumble, by mere chance — at a street corner, as it 
were — on the works of two such sculptors ! I do not 
know the authority on which these statues (Castor 
and Pollux, I presume) are attributed to Phidias and 
Praxiteles ; but they impressed me as noble and god- 
like, and I f&el inclined to take them for what they 
purport to be. On one side of the piazza is the Pon- 
tifical Palace ; but, not being aware of this at the 
time, I did not look particularly at the edifice. 

B 



66 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE -BOOKS. [l858. 

I came home by way of the Corso, which seemed a 
little enlivened by Carnival time ; though, as it was 
not yet two o'clock, the fun had not begun for the day. 
The rain throws a dreary damper on the festivities. 

February l?tth. — Day before yesterday we took 

J and R- in a carriage, and went to see the 

Carnival, by driving up and down the Corso. It was 
as ugly a day, as respects weather, as has befallen us 
since we came to Rome, — cloudy, with an indecisive 
wet, which finally settled into a rain ; and people say 
that such is generally the weather in Carnival time. 
There is very little to be said about the spectacle. 
Sunshine would have improved it, no doubt ; but a 
person must have very broad sunshine within himself 
to be joyous on such shallow provocation. The street, 
at all events, would have looked rather brilliant under 
a sunny sky, the balconies being hung with bright* 
colored draperies, which were also flung out of some 

of the windows Soon I had my first experience 

of the Carnival, in a handful of confetti, right slap in 

my face Many of the ladies wore loose white 

dominos, and some of the gentlemen had on defen- 
sive armor of blouses; and wire masks over the 
face were a protection for both sexes, — not a need- 
less one, for I received a shot in my right eye which 
cost me many tears. It seems to be a point of 
courtesy (though often disregarded by Americans 
and English) not to fling confetti at ladies, or 
at non-combatants, or quiet bystanders; and the 
engagements with these missiles were generally 
between open carriages, manned with youths, who 



1858.] ITALY. 67 

were provided with confetti for Euch encounters, 
and with bouquets for the ladies. We had one 
real enemy on the Corso; for our fonner friend 
Mrs. T — — was there, and as often as we passed and 
repassed her, she favored us with a handful of lime. 
Two or three times somebody ran by the carriage and 
puffed forth a shower of winged seeds through a tube 
into our faces and over our clothes; and, in the 
course of the afternoon, we were hit with perhaps 
half a dozen sugar-plums. Possibly we may not ho-ve 
received our fair share of these last salutes, for J ■ ' 
had on a black mask, which made him look like an 
imp of Satan, and drew many volleys of confetti that 
we might otherwise have escaped. A good many bou- 
quets were flung at our little R — — , and at us gener- 
ally. .... This was what is called masking-day, 
when it is the rule to wear masks in the Corso, but the 

great majority of people appeared without them 

Two fantastic figures, with enormous heads, set round 
with frizzly hair, came and grinned into our carriage, 

and J tore out a handful of hair (which proved to 

be sea-weed) from one of their heads, rather to the 
discomposure of the owner, who muttered his indigna- 
tion in Italian On comparing notes with J 

and R , indeed with U- too, I find that they 

all enjoyed the Carnival much more than I did. Only 
the young ought to write descriptions of such scenes. 
My cold criticism chills the life out of it. 

February \Uh. — Friday, 12th, was a sunny day, 
the first that we had had for some time ; and my 
wife and 1 went forth to see sights as well as to make 



68 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

some calls that had long been due. We went first to 
the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, which I have 
already mentioned, and, on our return, we went to the 
Piazza di Monte Cavallo, and saw those admirable an- 
cient statues of Castor and Pollux, which seem to me 
sons of the morning, and full of life and strength. 
The atmosphere, in such a length of time, has covered 
the marble surface of these statues with a gray rust, 
that envelops both the men and horses as with a 
garment; besides which, there are strange discolora- 
tion, such as patches of white moss on the elbows, and 
reddish streaks down the sides ; but the glory of form 
overcomes all these defects of color. It is pleasant 
to observe how familiar some little birds are with these 
colossal statues, — hopping about on their heads and 
over their huge fists, and very likely they have nests 
in their ears or among their hair. 

We called at the Barberini Palace, where William 
Story has established himself and family for the next 
seven years, or more, on the third piano, in apartments 
that aiford a very fine outlook over Rome, and have 

the sun in them through most of the day. Mrs. S 

invited us to her fancy ball, but we declined. 

On the staircase ascending to their piano we saw the 
ancient Greek bas-relief of a lion, whence Canova is 
supposed to have taken the idea of his lions on the 
monument in St. Peter's. Afterwards we made two 
or three calls in the neighborhood of the Piazza di 
Spagna, finding only Mr. Hamilton Fisk and family, 
at the Hotel d'Europe, at home, and next visited the 
studio of Mr. C. G. Thompson, whom I knew in 



1858.] ITALY. 69 

Boston. He has very greatly improved since those 
days, and, being always a man of delicate mind, and 
earnestly desiring excellence for its own sake, he has 
won himself the power of doing beautiful and elevated 
works. He is now meditating a series of pictures 
from Shakespeare's " Tempest," the sketches of one or 
two of which he showed us, likewise a copy of a small 
Madonna, by Raphael, wrought with a minute faithful- 
ness which it makes one a better man to observe. 
.... Mr. Thompson is a true artist, and whatever his 
pictures have of beauty comes from very far beneath 
the surface; and this, I suppose, is one weighty reason 
why he has but moderate success. I should like his 
pictures for the mere color, even if they represented 
nothing. His studio is in the Via Sistina ; and, at a 
little distance on the other side of the same street, is 
William Story's, where we likewise went, and found 
him at work on a sitting statue of Cleopatra. 

William Story looks quite as vivid, in a graver way, 
as when I saw him last, a very young man. His per- 
plexing variety of talents and accomplishments — he 
being a poet, a prose writer, a lawyer, a painter, a 
musician, and a sculptor — seems now to be concentrat- 
ing itself into this latter vocation, and I cannot see 
why he should not achieve something very good. He 
has a beautiful statue, already finished, of Goethe's 
Margaret, pulling a flower to pieces to discover whether 
Faust loves her; a very type of virginity and simpli- 
city. The statue of Cleopatra, now only fourteen 
days advanced in the clay, is as wide a step from the 
little maidenly Margaret as any artist could take ; it 



70 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

is a grand subject, and he is conceiving it with depth 
and power, and working it out with adequate skill. 
He certainly is sensible of something deeper in his art 
than merely to make beautiful nudities and baptize 
them by classic names. By the by, he told us several 
queer stories of American visitors to his studio : one 
of them, after long inspecting Cleopatra, into which 
he has put all possible characteristics of her time and 
nation and of her own individuality, asked, "Have 
you baptized your statue yet 1 " as if the sculptor were 
waiting till his statue were finished before he chose 
the subject of it, — as, indeed, I should think many 
sculptors do. Another remarked of a statue of Hero, 
who is seeking Leander by torchlight, and in momen- 
tary expectation of finding his drowned body, " Is 
not the face a little sadT' Another time a whole 
party of Americans filed into his studio, and ranged 
themselves round his father's statue, and, after much 
silent examination, the spokesman of the party in- 
quired, " Well, sir, what is this intended to represent 1" 
William Story, in telling these little anecdotes, gave 

the Yankee twang to perfection 

The statue of his father, his first work, is very 
noble, as noble and fine a portrait-statue as I ever 
saw. In the outer room of his studio a stone-cutter, 
or whatever this kind of artisan is called, was at 
work, transferring the statue of Hero from the 
plaster-cast into marble ; and already, though still in 
some respects a block of stone, there was a wonderful 
degree of expression in the face. It is not quite pleas- 
ant to think that the sculptor does not really do the 



1858.] ITALY. 71 

whole labor on his statues, but that they are all but 
finished to his hand by merely mechanical people. It 
is generally only the finishing touches that are given 
by his own chisel. 

Yesterday, being another bright day, we went to 
the basilica of St. John Lateran, which is the basilica 
next in rank to St. Peter's, and has the precedence of 
it as regards certain sacred privileges. It stands on a 
most noble site, on the outskirts of the city, com- 
manding a view of the Sabine and Alban hills, blue in 
the distance, and some of them hoary with sunny 
Snow. The ruins of the Claudian aqueduct are close 
at hand. The church is connected with the Lateran 
palace and museum, so that the whole is one edifice ; 
but the facade of the church distinguishes it, and is 
very lofty and grand, — more so, it seems to me, than 
that of St. Peter's. Under the portico is an old statue 
of Constantine, representing him as a very stout and 
sturdy personage. The inside of the church disap- 
pointed me, though no doubt I should have been 
wonder-struck had I seen it a month ag©. We went 
into one of the chapels, which was very rich in col- 
ored marbles; and, going down a winding staircase, 
found ourselves among the tombs and sarcophagi of 
th« Corsini family, and in presence of a marble Pieta, 
very beautifully sculptured. On the other side of the 
church we looked into the Torlonia Chapel, very rich 
and rather profusely gilded, but, as it seemed to me, 
not tawdry, though the white newness of the marble 
is not perfectly agreeable after being accustomed to 
the milder tint which time bestows on sculpture. 



72 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

The tombs and statues appeared like shapes and 
images of new-fallen snow. The most interesting thing 
which we saw in this church (and, admitting its 
authenticity, there can scarcely be a more interesting 
one anywhere) was the table at which the Last Supper 
was eaten. It is preserved in a corridor, on one side 
of the tribune or chancel, and is shown by torchlight 
suspended upon the wall beneath a covering of glass. 
Only the top of the table is shown, presenting a 
broad, flat surface of wood, evidently very old, and 
showing traces of dry-rot in one or two places. There 
are nails in it, and the attendant said that it had 
formerly been covered with bronze. As well as I can 
remember, it may be five or six feet square, and I 
suppose would accommodate twelve persons, though 
not if they reclined in the Roman fashion, nor if they 
sat as they do in Leonardo da Vinci's picture. It 
would be very delightful to believe in this table. 

There are several other sacred relics preserved in 
the church ; for instance, -the staircase of Pilate's 
house up which Jesus went, and the porphyry slab on 
which the soldiers cast lots for his garments. These, 
however, we did not see. There are very glowing 
frescos on portions of the walls; but, there being 
much whitewash instead of incrusted marble, it has 
not the pleasant aspect which one's eye learns to 
demand in Roman churches. There is a good deal of 
statuary along the columns of the nave, and in the 
monuments of the side-aisles. 

In reference to the interior splendor of Roman 
churches, I must say that I think it a pity that paint- 



1858.] ITALY. 73 

ed windows are exclusively a Gothic ornament ; for 
the elaborate ornamentation of these interiors puts 
the ordinary daylight out of countenance, so that a 
window with only the white sunshine coming through 
it, or even with a glimpse of the blue Italian sky, 
looks like a portion left unfinished, and therefore a 
blotch in the rich wall. It is like the one spot in 
Aladdin's palace which he left for the king, his father- 
in-law, to finish, after his fairy architects had exhaust- 
ed their magnificence on the rest ; and the sun, like 
the king, fails in the effort. It has what is called a 
porta santa, which we saw walled up, in front of the 
church, one side of the main entrance. I know not 
what gives it its sanctity, but it appears to be opened 
by the pope on a year of jubilee, once every quarter 
of a century. 

After our return .... I took R along the Pin- 

cian Hill, and finally, after witnessing what of the 
Carnival could be seen in the Piazza del Popolo from 
that safe height, we went down into the Corso, and 
some little distance along it. Except for the sun- 
shine, the scene was much the same as I have already 
described ; perhaps fewer confetti and more bouquets. 
Some Americans and English are said to have been 
brought before the police authorities, and fined for 
throwing lime. It is remarkable that the jollity, such 
as it is, of the Carnival, does not extend an inch 
beyond the line of the Corso ; there it flows along in 
a narrow stream, while in the nearest street we see 
nothing but the ordinary Roman gravity. 

February \bth. — Yesterday was a bright day, but I 

VOL. I. 4 



74 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

did not go out till the afternoon, when I took an hour's 
walk along the Pincian, stopping a good while to look 
at the old beggar who, for many years past, has occu- 
pied one of the platforms of the flight of steps leading 
from the Piazza di Spagna to the Trinita di Monti. 
Hillard commemorates him in his book. He is an 
unlovely object, moving about on his hands and 
knees, principally by aid of his hands, which are forti- 
fied with a sort of wooden shoes ; while his poor, 
wasted lower shanks stick up in the air behind him, 
loosely vibrating as he progresses. He is gray,, old, 
ragged, a pitiable sight, but seems very active in hia 
own fashion, and bestirs himself on the approach of 
his visitors with the alacrity of a spider when a fly 
touches the remote circumference of his web. While 
I looked down at him he received alms from three 
persons, one of whom was a young woman of the lower 
orders ; the other two were gentlemen, probably either 
English or American. I could not quite make out the 
principle on which he let some people pass without 
molestation, while he shuffled from one end of the 
platform to the other to intercept an occasional indi- 
vidual. He is not persistent in his demands, nor, 
indeed, is this a usual fault among Italian beggars. 
A shake of the head will stop him when wriggling 
towards you from a distance. I fancy he reaps a 
pretty fair harvest, and no doubt leads as contented 
and as interesting a life as most people, sitting there 
all day on those sunny steps, looking at the- world, 
and making his profit out of it. It must be pretty 
much such an oeoupation as fishing, in its effect upon 



1858.] ITALY. 75 

the hopes and apprehensions ; and probably he suffers 
no more from the many refusals he meets with than 
the angler does, when he sees a fish smell at his bait 
and swim away. One success pays for a hundred dis- 
appointments, and the game is all the better for not 
being entirely in his own favor. 

Walking onward, I found the Pincian thronged with 
promenaders, as also with carriages, which drove 
round the verge of the gardens in an unbroken ring. 

To-day has been very rainy. I went out in the 
forenoon, and took a sitting for my bust in one of a 
suite of rooms formerly occupied by Canova. It was 
large, high, and dreary from the want of a carpet, 
furniture, or anything but clay and plaster. A sculp- 
tor's studio has not the picturesque charm of that of 
a painter, where there is color, warmth, and cheerful- 
ness, and where the artist continually turns towards 
you the glow of some picture, which is resting against 

the wall I was asked not to look at the bust 

at the close of the sitting, and, of course, I obeyed ; 
though 1 have a vague idea of a heavy-browed physi- 
ognomy, something like what I have seen in the glass, 
but looking strangely in that guise of clay 

It is a singular fascination that Rome exercises 
uj)on artists. There is clay elsewhere, and marble 
enough, and heads to model, and ideas may be made 
sensible objects at home as well as here. I think it is 
the peculiar mode of life that attracts, and its freedom 
from the inthralments of society, more than the ar- 
tistic advantages which Rome offers ; and, no doubt, 
though the artists care little about one another's 



76 FKEXCa AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [185S. 

works, yet tliey keep each other warm by the pres- 
ence of so many of them. 

The Carnival still continues, though I hardly see 
how it can have withstood such a damper as this 
rainy day. There were several people — three, I 
think — killed in the Corso on Saturday ; some ac- 
counts say that they were run over by the horses in 
the race ; others, that they were ridden down by the 
dragoons in clearing the course. 

After leaving Canova's studio, I stepped into the 
church of San Luigi de Franchesi, in the Via di 
Ripetta. It was built, I believe, by Catherine di 
Medici, and is under the protection of the French 
government, and a most shamefully dirty place of 
worship, the beautiful marble columns looking dingy, 
for the want of loving and pious care. There are 
many tombs and monuments of French people, both of 
the past and present, — artists, soldiers, priests, and 
others, who have died in Rome. It was so dusky 
within the church that I could hardly distinguish the 
pictures in the chapels and over the altar, nor did I 
know that there were any worth looking for. Never- 
theless, there were frescos by Domenichino, and oil- 
paintings by Guide and others. I found it peculiarly 
touching to read the records, in Latin or French, of 
persons who had died in this foreign land, though 
they were not my own country-people, and though I 
was even less akin to them than they to Italy. Still, 
there was a sort of relationship in the fact that neither 
they nor I belonged here. 

Fehruary 1 Ith. — Yesterday morning was perfectly 



1858.] ITALY. 77 

sunny, and we went out betimes to see churches ; 
going first to the Capuchins', close by the Piazza 
Barberini. 

["The Marble Faun' takes up this description of 
the church and of the dead monk, which we really 
saw, just as recounted, even to the sudden stream 
of blood which flowed from the nostrils, as we looked 
at him. — Ed. ] 

We next went to the Trinita di Monti, which 
stands at the head of the steps, leading, in several 
flights, from the Piazza di Spagna. It is now con- 
nected with a convent of French nuns, and when we 
rang at a side door, one of the sisterhood answered 
the summons, and admitted us into the church. This, 
like that of the Capuchin's, had a vaulted roof over 
the nave, and no side-aisles, but rows of chapels 
instead. Unlike the Capuchin's, which was filthy, 
and really disgraceful to behold, this church was most 
exquisitely neat, as women alone would have thought 
it worth while to keep it. It is not a very splendid 
church, not rich in gorgeous marbles, but pleasant 
to be in, if it were only for the sake of its godly 
purity. There was only one person in the nave ; a 
young girl, who sat perfectly still, with her face 
towards the altar, as long as we stayed. Between 
the nave and the rest of the church, there is a high 
iron railing, and on the other side of it were two 
kneeling figures in black, so motionless that I at 
first thought them statues ; but they proved to be two 
nuns at their devotions ; and others of the sisterhood 
came by and by and joined them. Nuns, at least 



T8 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

these nuns, who are French, and probably ladies of 
refinement, having the education of young girls in 
charge, are far pleasanter objects to see and think 
about than monks ; the odor of sanctity, in the latter, 
not being an agreeable fragrance. But these holy 
sisters, with their black crape and white muslin, 
looked really pure and unspotted from the world. 

On the iron railing above mentioned was the repre- 
sentation of a golden heart, pierced with arrows ; for 
these are nuns of the Sacred Heart. In the various 
chapels there are several paintings in fresco, some by 
Daniele da Volterra ; and one of them, the " Descent 
from the Cross," has been pronounced the third 
greatest picture in the world. I never should have 
had the slightest suspicion that it was a great picture 
at all, so worn and faded it looks, and so hard, so 
difficult to be seen, and so undelightful when one 
does see it. 

From the Trinita we went to the Santa Maria del 
Popolo, a church built on a spot where Nero is said 
to have been buried, and which was afterwards made 
horrible by devilish phantoms. It now being past 
twelve, and all the churches closing from twelve till 
two, we had not time to pay much attention to the 
frescos, oil-pictures, and statues, by Kaphael and 
other famous men, which are to be seen here. I 
remember dimly the magnificent chapel of the Chigi 
family, and little else, for we stayed but a short time ; 
and went next to the sculptor's studio, where I 
had another sitting for my bust. After I had been 
moulded for about an hour, we turned homeward; 



1858.] ITALY. 79 

but my wife concluded to hire a balcony for this last 
afternoon and evening of the Carniyal, and she took 
possession of it, while I went home to send to her 

Miss S and the two elder children. For my 

part, I took R , and walked, by way of the Pin- 

cian, to the Piazza del Popolo, and thence along the 
Corso, where, by this time, the warfare of bouquet^ 
and confetti raged pretty fiercely. The sky being 
blue and the sun bright, the scene looked much 
gayer and brisker than I had before found it ; and I 
can conceive of its being rather agreeable than other- 
wise, up to the age of twenty. We got several volleys 
of confetti. R received a bouquet and a sugar- 
plum, and I a resounding hit from something that 
looked more like a cabbage than a flower. Little as 
I have enjoyed the Carnival, I think I could make 
quite a brilliant sketch of it, without very widely de^ 
parting from truth. 

February \^th. — Day before yesterday, pretty early, 
we went to St, Peter's, expecting to see the pope cast 
ashes on the heads of the cardinals, it being Ash- 
Wednesday. On arriving, however, we found no 
more than the usual number of visitants and devo- 
tional people scattered through the broad interior of 
St. Peter's ; and thence concluded that the ceremonieai 
were to be performed in the Sistine Chapel. Accord- 
iiiglyj ^e went out of the Cathedral, through the door 
in the left transept, and passed round the exterior, 
and through the vast courts of the Vatican, seeking 
for the chapel. We had blundered into the carriage- 
entrance of the palace ; there is an entrance from 



80 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

some point near the front of the church, but this we 
did not find. The papal guards, in the strangest 
antique and antic costume that was ever seen, — a 
party-colored dress, striped with blue, red, and yel- 
low, white and black, with a doublet and ruff, and 
trunk-breeches, and armed with halberds, — were on 
duty at the gateways, but suffered us to pass without 
question. Finally, we reached a large court, where 
some cardinals' red equipages and other carriages 
were drawn up, but were still at a loss as to the 
whereabouts of the chapel. At last an attendant 
kindly showed us the proper door, and led us up 
flights of stairs, along passages and galleries, and 
through halls, till at last we came to a spacious and 
lofty apartment adorned with frescos ; this was the 
Sala Regia, and the antechamber to the Sistine 
Chapel. 

The attendant, meanwhile, had informed us that 
my wife could not be admitted to the chapel in her 
bonnet, and that I myself could not enter at all, for 
lack of a dress-coat ; so my wife took off her bonnet, 
and, covering her head with her black lace veil, was 
readily let in, while I remained in the Sala Regia, 
with several other gentlemen, who found themselves 
in the same predicament as I was. There was a 
wonderful variety of costume to be seen and studied 
among the persons around me, comprising garbs that 
have been elsewhere laid aside for at least three cen- 
turies, — the broad, plaited, double ruff, and black 
velvet cloak, doublet, trunk-breeches, and sword of 
Queen Elizabeth's time, — the papal guard, in their 



1858.] ITALY. 81 

striped and party-colored dress as before described, 
looking not a little like harlequins ; other soldiers in 
helmets and jackboots; French officers of various 
uniform ; monks and priests ; attendants in old- 
fashioned and gorgeous livery ; gentlemen, some in 
black dress-coats and pantaloons, others in wide- 
awake hats and tweed overcoats; and a few ladies 
in the prescribed costume of black ; so that, in any 
other country, the scene might have been taken for a 
fancy ball. By and by, the cardinals began to arrive, 
and added their splendid purple robes and red hats to 
make the picture still more brilliant. They were old 
men, one or two very aged and infirm, and generally 
men of bulk and substance, with heavy faces, fleshy 
about the chin. Their red hats, trimmed with gold- 
lace, are a beautiful piece of finery, and are identical 
in shape with the black, loosely cocked beavers worn 
by the Catholic ecclesiastics generally. Wolsey's hat, 
which I saw at the Manchester Exhibition, might have 
been made on the same block, but apparently was 
never cocked, as the fashion now is. The attendants 
changed the upper portions of their master's attire, 
and put a little cap of scarlet cloth on each of their 
heads, after which the cardinals, one by one, or two 
by two, as they happened to arrive, went into the 
chapel, with a page behind each holding up his purple 
train. In the mean while, within the chapel, we heard 
singing and chanting ; and whenever the voluminous 
curtains that hung before the entrance were slightly 
drawn apart, we outsiders glanced through, but could 
see only a mass of people, and beyond them still 
4* T 



S2 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

another chapel, divided from the hither one by a 
screen. When almost everybody had gone in, there 
was a stir among the guards and attendants, and a 
door opened, apparently communicating with the inner 
apartments of the Vatican. Through this door came, 
not the pope, as I had partly expected, but a 
bulky old lady in black, with a red face, who bowed 
towards the spectators with an aspect of dignified 
complaisance as she passed towards the entrance of 
the chapel. I took off my hat, unlike certain English 
gentlemen who stood nearer, and found that I had 
not done amiss, for it was the Queen of Spain. 

There was nothing else to be seen ; so I went back 
through the antechambers (which are noble halls, 
richly frescoed on the walls and ceilings), endeavoring 
to get out through the same passages that had let me 
in. I had already tried to descend what I now sup- 
pose to be the Scala Santa, but had been turned back 
by a sentinel. After wandering to and fro a good 
while, I at last found myself in a long, long gallery, 
on each side of which were innumerable inscriptions, 
in Greek and Latin, on slabs of marble, built into the 
walls ; and classic altars and tablets were ranged 
along, from end to end. At the extremity Vas a 
closed iron grating, from which I was retreating ; but 
a French gentleman accosted me, with the informa- 
tion that the custode would admit me, if I chose, and 
would accompany me through the sculpture depart- 
ment of the Vatican. I acceded, and thus took my 
first view of those innumerable art-treasures, passing 
from one object to another, at an easy pace, pausing 



1858.] ITALY. $3 

hardly a moment anywhere, and dismissing even the 
Apollo, and the Laocoon, and the Torso of Hercules, 
in the space of half a dozen breaths. I was well 
enough content to do so, in order to get a general 
idea of the contents of the galleries, before settling 
down upon individual objects. 

Most of the world-famous sculptures presented them- 
selves to my eye with a kind of familiarity, through 
the copies and casts which I had seen ; but I found 
the originals more different than I anticipated. The 
Apollo, for instance, has a face which I have never 
seen in any cast or copy. I must confess, however, 
taking such transient glimpses as I did, I was more 
impressed with the extent of the Vatican, and the 
beautiful order in which it is kept, and its great sun- 
ny, open courts, with fountains, grass, and shrubs, and 
the views of Rome and the Campagna from its win- 
dows, — more impressed with these, and with certain 
vastly capacious vases, and two great sarcophagi, — 
than with the statuary. Thus I went round the 
whole, and was dismissed through the grated barrier 
into the gallery of inscriptions again ; and after a lit- 
tle more wandering, I made my way out of the 
palace 

Yesterday I went out betimes, and strayed through 
some portion of ancient Rome, to the Column of Tra- 
jan, to the Forum, thence along the Appian Way ; 
after which I lost myself among the intricacies of the 
streets, and finally came out at the bridge of St. An- 
gelo. The first observation which a stranger is led 
to make, in the neighborhood of Roman ruins, is that 



84 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

the inhabitants seem to be strangely addicted to the 
washing of clothes ; for all the precincts of Trajan's 
Forum, and of the Roman Forum, and wherever else 
an iron railing affords opportunity to hang them, were 
whitened with sheets, and other linen and cotton, dry- 
ing in the sun. It must be that washerwomen bur- 
row among the old temples. The second observation 
is not quite so favorable to the cleanly character of 
the modern Romans ; indeed, it is so very unfavora- 
ble, that I hardly know how to express it. But the 
fact is, that, through the forum, .... and anywhere 
out of the commonest foot-track and road-way, you 
must look well to your steps If you tread be- 
neath the triumphal arch of Titus or Constantine, you 
had better look downward than upward, whatever be 

the merit of the sculptures aloft 

After a while the visitant finds himself getting ac- 
customed to this horrible state of things ; and the 
associations of moral sublimity and beauty seem to 
throw a veil over the physical meannesses to which I 
allude. Perhaps there is something in the mind of 
the people of these countries that enables them quite 
to dissever small ugliness from great sublimity and 
beauty. They spit upon the glorious pavement of St. 
Peter's, and wherever else they like ; they place pal- 
try-looking wooden confessionals beneath its sublime 
arches, and ornament them with cheap little colored 
prints of the crucifixion ; they hang tin hearts and 
other tinsel and trumpery at the gorgeous shrines of 
the saints, in chapels that are incrusted with gems, or 
marbles almost as precious ; they put pasteboard stat- 



1858.] ITALY. 85 

ues of saints beneath the dome of the Pantheon ; in 
short, they let the sublime and the ridiculous come 
close together, and are not in the least troubled by 
the proximity. It must be that their sense of the 
beautiful is stronger than in the Anglo-Saxon mind, 
and that it observes only what is fit to gratify it. 

To-day, which was bright and cool, my wife and I 
set forth immediately after breakfast, in search of the 
Baths of Diocletian, and the church of Santa Maria 
degl' Angeli. We went too far along the Via di Porta 
Pia, and after passing by two or three convents, and 
their high garden walls, and the villa Bonaparte on 
one side, and the villa Torlonia on the other, at last 
issued through the city gate. Before us, far away, 
were the Alban hills, the loftiest of which was abso- 
lutely silvered with snow and sunshine, and set in the 
bluest and brightest of skies. We now retraced our 
steps to the Fountain of the Termini, where is a pon- 
derous heap of stone, representing Moses striking the 
rock; a colossal figure, not without a certain enor- 
mous might and dignity, though rather too evidently 
looking his awfuUest. This statue was the death of 
its sculptor, whose heart was broken on account of 
the ridicule it excited. There are many more absurd 
aquatic devices in Kome, however, and few better. 

We turned into the Piazza di Termini, the entrance 
of which is at this fountain ; and after some inquiry of 
the French soldiers, a numerous detachment of whom 
appear to be quartered in the vicinity, we found our 
way to the portal of Santa Maria degl' Angeli. The 
exterior of this church has no pretensions to beauty or 



86 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858 

majesty, or, indeed, to architectural merit of any kind, 
or to any architecture whatever ; for it looks like a 
confused pile of ruined brickwork, with a fagade re- 
gembling half the inner curve of a large oven. No one 
would imagine that there was a church under that 
enormous heap of ancient rubbish. But the door ad- 
mits you into a circular vestibule, once an apartment 
of Diocletian's Baths, but now a portion of the nave of 
the church, and surrounded with monumental busts ; 
and thence you pass into what was the central hall ; 
now, with little change, except of detail and ornament, 
transformed into the body of the church. This space 
is so lofty, broad, and airy, that the soul forthwith 
swells out and magnifies itself, for the sake of fiilling 
it. It was Michel Angelo who contrived this miracle ; 
and I feel even more gi-ateful to him for rescuing such 
a noble interior from destruction, than if he had origi- 
nally built it himself. In the ceiling above, you seQ 
the metal fixtures whereon the old Romans hung their 
laijips ; and there are eight gigantic pillars of Egyp- 
tian granite, standing as they stood of yore. There is 
a grand simplicity about the church, more satisfactory 
than elaborate ornament ; but the present pope ha3 
paved and adorned one of the large chapels of the 
transept in very beautiful style, and the pavement of 
the central part is likewise laid in rich marbles. In 
the choir there are several pictures, one of which waa 
veiled, as celebrated pictures frequently are iu 
churches. A person, who seemed to be at his devo' 
tions, withdrew the veil for us, and we saw a Martyr- 
dom of St. Sebastian, by Domenichino, originally, I 



1858.] ITALY. 87 

believe, painted in fresco in St. Peter's, but since trans- 
ferred to canvas, and removed hither. Its place at 
St. Peter's is supplied by a mosaic copy. I was a 
good deal impressed by this picture, — the dying saint, 
amid the sorrow of those who loved him, and the fury 
of his enemies, looking upward, where a company of 
angels, and Jesus with them, are waiting to welcome 
him and crown him ; and I felt what an influence 
pictures might have upon the devotional part of our 
nature. The nail-marks in the hands and feet of 
Jesus, ineffaceable, even after he had passed into bliss 
and glory, touched my heart with a sense of his love 
for us. I think this really a great picture. We walked 
round the church, looking at other paintings and 
frescos, but saw no others that greatly interested us. 
In the vestibule there are monuments to Carlo Maratti 
and Salvator Rosa, and there is a statue of St, Bruno, 
by Houdon, which is pronounced to be very fine. I 
thought it good, but scarcely worthy of vast admira- 
tion. Houdon was the sculptor of the first statue of 
Washington, and of the bust, whence, I suppose, all 
subsequent statues have been, and will be, mainly 
modelled. 

After emerging from the church, I looked back 
with wonder at the stack of shapeless old brickwork 
that hid the splendid interior. I must go there again, 
and breathe freely in that noble space. 

February 20th. - — This morning, after breakfast, I 
walked across the city, making a pretty straight 
course to the Pantheon, and thence to the bridge of 
St. Augelo, and to St. Peter's. It had been my pui:- 



88 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

pose to go to the Fontana Paolina ; but, finding that 
the distance was too great, and being weighed down 
with a Roman lassitude, I concluded to go into St. 
Peter's. Here I looked at Michel Angelo's Pieta, a 
representation of the dead Christ, in his mother's lap. 
Then I strolled round the great church, and find that 
it continues to grow upon me both in magnitude and 
beauty, by comparison with the many interiors of 
sacred edifices which I have lately seen. At times, a 
single, casual, momentary glimpse of its magnificence 
gleams upon my soul, as it were, when I happen to 
glance at arch opening beyond arch, and I am sur- 
prised into admiration. I have experienced that a 
landscape and the sky unfold the deepest beauty in a 
similar way* not when they are gazed at of set pur- 
pose, but when the spectator looks suddenly through 
a vista, among a crowd of other thoughts. Passing 
near the confessional for foreigners to-day, I saw a 
Spaniard, who had just come out of the one devoted 
to his native tongue, taking leave of his confessor, 
with an affectionate reverence, which — as well as the 
benign dignity of the good father — it was good to 

behold 

I returned home early, in order to go with my wife 
to the Barberini Palace at two o'clock. We entered 
through the gateway, through the Via delle Quattro 
Fontane, passing one or two sentinels; for there is 
apparently a regiment of dragoons quartered on the 
ground floor of the palace; and I stumbled upon a 
room containing their saddles, the other day, when 
seeking for Mr. Story's staircase. The entrance to 



1858.] ITALY. 89 

the picture gallery is by a door on the right hand, 
affording us a sight of a beautiful spiral staircase, 
which goes circling upward from the very basement 
to the very summit of the palace, with a perfectly 
easy ascent, yet confining its sweep within a moderate 
compass. We looked up through the interior of the 
spiral, as through a tube, from the bottom to the top. 
The pictures are contained in three contiguous rooms 
of the lower piano, and are few in number, compris- 
ing barely half a dozen which I should care to see 
again, though doubtless all have value in their way. 
One that attracted our attention was a picture of 
"Christ disputing with the Doctors," by Albert 
Diirer, in which was represented the ugliest, most 
evil-minded, stubborn, pragmatical, and contentious 
old Jew that ever lived under the law of Moses ; and 
he and the child Jesus were arguing, not only with 
their tongues, but making hieroglyphics, as it were, 
by the motion of their hands and fingers. It is a very 
queer, as well as a very remarkable picture. But we 
passed hastily by this, and almost all others, being 
eager to see the two which chiefly make the collection 
famous, — Raphael's Fornarina, and Guido's portrait of 
Beatrice Cenci. These were found in the last of the 
three rooms, and as regards Beatrice Cenci, I might as 
well not try to say anything ; for its spell is indefina- 
ble, and the painter has wrought it in a way more 
like magic than anything else. .... 

It is the most profoundly wrought picture in the 
world ; no artist did it, nor could do it again. Guido 
may have held the brush, but he painted better than 



90 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858 

he knew. I wish, however^ it were possible for some 
spectator, of deep sensibiHty, to see the picture with- 
out knowing anything of its subject or history ; for, 
no doubt, we bring all our knowledge of the Cenci 
tragedy to the interpretation of it. 

Close beside Beatrice Cenci hangs the Forna' 
rina 

While we were looking at these works Miss M ■ 

unexpectedly joined us, and we went, all three to- 
gether, to the Rospigliosi Palace, in the Piazza di 
Monte Cavallo. A porter, in cocked hat, and with a 
staff of office, admitted us into a spacious court be- 
fore the palace, and directed us to a garden on one 
side, raised as much as twenty feet above the level on 
which we stood. The gardener opened the gate for 
us, and we ascended a beautiful stone staircase, with 
a carved balustrade, bearing many marks of time and 
weather. Reaching the garden-level, we found it laid 
out in walks, bordered with box and ornamental 
shrubbery, amid which were lemon-trees, and one 
large old exotic from some distant clime. In the 
centre of the garden, surrounded by a stone balus- 
trade, like that of the staircase, was a fish-pond, into 
which several jets of water were continually spouting ; 
and on pedestals, that made part of the balusters, 
stood eight marble statues of Apollo, Cupid, nymphs, 
and other such sunny and beautiful people of classic 
mythology. There had 'been many more of these 
statuesj but the rest had disappeared, and those which 
remained had suffered grievous damage, here to a 
nose, there to a hand or foot, and often a fracture of 



1858.] ITALT. 91 

the body, very imperfectly mended. There was a 
pleasant sunshine in the garden^ and a springlike, or 
rather a genial, autumnal atmosphere, though else- 
where it was a day of poisonous Roman chill. 

At the end of the garden, which was of no great 
extent, was an edifice, bordering on the piazza, called 
the Casino, which, I presume, means a garden-house. 
The front is richly ornamented with bas-reliefs, 
and statues in niches ; as if it were a place for 
pleasure and enjoyment, and therefore ought to be 
beautiful. As we approached it, the door swung 
open, and we went into a large room on the ground 
floor, and, looking up to the ceiling, beheld Guido's 
Aurora. The picture is as fresh and brilliant as if 
he had painted it with the morning sunshine which it 
represents. It could not be more lustrous in its 
hues, if he had given it the last touch an hour ago. 
Three or four artists were copying it at that instant, 
and positively their colors did not look brighter, 
though a great deal newer than his. The alacrity 
and movement, briskness and morning stir and glow 
of the picture are wonderful. It seems impossible to 
catch its glory in a copy. Several artists, as I said, 
were making the attempt, and we saw two other 
attempted copies leaning against the wall, but it 
was easy to detect failure in just essential points. 
My memory, I believe, will be somewhat enlivened 
by this picture hereafter : not that I remember it very 
distinctly even now ; but bright things leave a sheen 
and glimmer in the mind, like Christian's tremulous 
^impse of the Celestial City. 



92 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

In two other rooms of the Casino we saw pictures 
by Domenichino, Rubens, and other famous painters, 
which I do not mean to speak of, because I cared 
really little or nothing about them. Returning into 
the garden, the sunny warmth of which was most 
grateful after the chill air and cold pavement of the 
Casino, we walked round the laguna, examining the 
statues, and looking down at some little fishes that 
swarmed at the stone margin of the pool. There 
were two infants of the Rospigliosi family : one, a 
young child playing with a maid and head-servant ; 
another, the very chubbiest and rosiest boy in the 
world, sleeping on its niu*se's bosom. The nurse was 
a comely woman enough, dressed in bright colors, 
which fitly set off the deep hues of her Italian face. 
An old painter very likely would have beautified and 
refined the pair into a Madonna, with the child Jesus ; 
for an artist need not go far in Italy to find a picture 
ready composed and tinted, needing little more than 
to be literally copied. 

Miss M had gone away before us ; but my wife 

and I, after leaving the Palazzo Rospigliosi, and on 
our way home, went into the Church of St. Andrea, 
which belongs to a convent of Jesuits. I have long 
ago exhausted all my capacity of admiration for splen- 
did interiors of churches, but methinks this little, little 
temple (it is not more than fifty or sixty feet across) has^ 
a more perfect and gem-like beauty than any other. 
Its shape is oval, with an oval dome, and, above that, 
another little dome, both of which are magnificently 
frescoed. Around the base of the larger dome i» 



1858.] ITALY. 93 

wreathed a flight of angels, and the smaller and 
upper one is encircled by a garland of cherubs, — 
cherub and angel all of pure white marble. The 
oval centre of the church is walled round with pre- 
cious and lustrous marble of a red-veined variety 
interspersed with columns and pilasters of white; 
and there are arches opening through this rich wall, 
forming chapels, which the architect seems to have 
striven hard to make even more gorgeous than the 
main body of the church. They contain beautiful 
pictures, not dark and faded, but glowing, as if just 
from the painter's hands ; and the shrines are adorned 
with whatever is most rare, and in one of them was 
the great carbuncle ; at any rate, a bright, fiery gem 
as big as a turkey's egg. The pavement of the 
church was one star of various-colored marble, and 
in the centre was a mosaic, covering, I believe, the 
tomb of the founder. I have not seen, nor expect 
to see, anything else so entirely and satisfactorily 
finished as this small oval church ; and I only wish 
I could pack it in a large box, and send it home. 

I must not forget that, on our way from the Bar- 
berini Palace, we stopped an instant to look at the 
house, at the corner of the street of the four fountains, 
where Milton was a guest while in Rome. He seems 
quite a man of our own day, seen so nearly at the 
hither extremity of the vista through which we look 
back, from the epoch of railways to that of the oldest 
Egyptian obelisk. The house (it was then occupied 
by the Cardinal Barberini) looks as if it might have 
been built within the present century ; for mediaeval 



94 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

houses in Rome do not assume the aspect of antiq;- 
uity ; perhaps because the Italian style of architec- 
ture, or something similar, is the one more generally 
in vogue in most cities. 

February ^\st. — ^ This morning I took my way 
through the Porta del Popolo, intending to spend 
the forenoon in the Campagna ; hut, getting weaiy of 
the straight, uninteresting street that runs out of the 
gate, I turned aside from it, and soon found myself 
on the shores of the Tiher. It looked, as usual, like a 
saturated solution of yellow mud, and eddied hastily 
along between deep banks of clay, and over a clay 
bed, in which doubtless are hidden many a richer 
treasure than we now possess. The French onceT 
proposed to draw off the river, for the purpose of re- 
covering all the sunken statues and relics ; but tho 
Romans made strenuous objection, on account of the 
increased virulence of malaria which would probably 
result. I saw a man on the immediate shore of the 
river, fifty feet or so beneath the bank on which I 
stood, sitting patiently, with an angling rod ; and I 
waited to see what he might catch. Two other per- 
K)n^ likewise sat down to watch him ; but he caught 
nothing so long as I stayed, and at last seemed to 
give it up. The banks and vicinity of the river are 
very bare and uninviting, as I then saw them ; no 
shade, no verdure, — a rough, neglected aspect, and a 
peculiar shabbiness about the few houses that were 
visible. Farther down the stream the dome of St. 
Peter's showed itself on the other side, seeming to 
stftud on the outskirts of the city. I walked along 



1858.] ITALY. 95 

the banks, with some expectation of finding a ferry, 
by which I might cross the river ; but my course was 
soon interrupted by the wall, and I turned up a lane 
that led me straight back again to the Porta del 
Popolo. I stopped a moment, however, to see some 
young men pitching quoits, which they appeared to 
do with a good deal of skill. 

I went along the Via di Ripetta, and through other 
streets, stepping into two or three churches, one of 
which was the Pantheon 

There are, I think, seven deep, pillared recesses 
around the circumference of it, each of which becomes 
a sufficiently capacious chapel ; and alternately with 
these chapels there is a marble structure, like the 
architecture of a doorway, beneath which is the shrine 
of a saint ; so that the whole circle of the Pantheon is 
filled up with the seven chapels and seven shrines. 
A number of persons were sitting or kneeling around ; 
others came in while I was there, dipping their fin- 
gers in the holy water, and bending the knee, as they 
passed the shrines and chapels, until they reached the 
one which, apparently, they had selected as the par- 
ticular altar for their devotions. Everybody seemed 
so devout, and in a frame of mind so suited to the 
day and place, that it really made me feel a little 
awkward not to be able to kneel down along with 
them. Unlike the worshippers in our own churches, 
each individual here seems to do his own individual 
acts of devotion, and I cannot but think it better so 
than to make an effort for united prayer as we do. It 
is my opinion that a great deal of devout and reveren- 



96 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

tial feeling is kept alive in people's hearts by the 
Catholic mode of worship. 

Soon leaving the Pantheon, a few minutes' walk 
towards the Corso brought me to the Church of St. 
Ignazio, which belongs to the College of the Jesuits. 
It is spacious and of beautiful architecture, but not 
strikingly distinguished, in the latter particular, from 
many others ; a wide and lofty nave, supported upon 
marble columns, between which arches open into the 
side-aisles, and at the junction of the nave and tran- 
sept a dome, resting on four great arches. The 
church seemed to be purposely somewhat darkened, 
so that I could not well see the details of the orna- 
mentation, except the frescos on the ceiling of the 
nave, which were very brilliant, and done in so effec- 
tual a style, that I really could not satisfy myself that 
some of the figures did not actually protrude from the 
ceiling, — in short, that they were not colored bas-re- 
liefs, instead of frescos. No words can express the 
beautiful effect, in an upholstery point of view, of this 
kind of decoration. Here, as at the Pantheon, there 
were many persons sitting silent, kneeling, or passing 
from shrine to shrine. 

I reached home at about twelve, and, at one, set 
out again, with my wife, towards St. Peter's, where we 
meant to stay till after vespers. We walked across 
the city, and through the Piazza de Navona, where we 
stopped to look at one of Bernini's absurd fountains, 
of which the water makes but the smallest part, — a 
little squirt or two amid a prodigious fuss of gods and 
monsters. Thence we passed by the poor, battered- 



1858.] ITALY. 97 

down torso pf Pasquin, and came, by devious ways, to 
the bridge of St. Angelo; the streets bearing pretty 
much their week-day aspect, many of the shops open, 
the market-stalls doing their us\ial business, and the 
people brisk and gay, though not indecorously so. 1 
suppose there was hardly a man or woman who had 
not heard mass, confessed, and said their prayers ; a 
thing which — the prayers, I mean — it would be ab- 
surd to predicate of London, New York, or any Prot- 
estant city. In however adulterated a guise, the 
Catholics do get a draught of devotion to slake the 
thirst of their souls, and methinks it must needs do 
them good, even if not quite so pure as if it came 
from better cisterns, or from the original fountain- 
head. 

Arriving at St. Peter's shortly after two, we walked 
round the whole church, looking at all the pictures 
and most of the monuments, .... and paused lon- 
gest before Guide's "Archangel Michael overcoming 
Lucifer." This is surely one of the most beautiful 
things in the world, one of the human conceptions 
that are imbued most deeply with the celestial, .... 

We then sat down in one of the aisles and awaited 
the beginning of vespers, which we supposed would 
take place at half past three. Four o'clock came, 
however, and no vespers ; and as our dinner hour is 
five, .... we at last came away withoiit hearing the 
vesper hymn. 

February 23d. — ^Yesterday, at noon, we set out for 
the Capitol, and after going up the acclivity (not from 
the Forum, but from the opposite direction), stopped 



98 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

to look at the statues of Castor and Pollux, which, 
with other sculptures, look down the ascent. Castor 
and his brother seem to me to have heads dispropor- 
tionately large, and are not so striking, in any respect, 
as such great images ought to be. But we heartily 
admired the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius 
Antoninus, .... and looked at a fountain, principally 
composed, I think, of figures representing the Nile and 
the Tiber, who loll upon their elbows and preside over 
the gushing water ; and between them, against the 
facade of the Senator's Palace, there is a statue of 
Minerva, with a petticoat of red porphyry. Having 
taken note of these objects, we went to the Museum, 
in an edifice on our left, entering the piazza, and here, 
in the vestibule, we found various old statues and 
relics. Ascending the stairs, we passed through a 
long gallery, and, turning to our left, examined some- 
what more carefully a suite of rooms running parallel 
with it. The first of these contained busts of the 
Caesars and their kindred, from the epoch of the 
mightiest Julius downward ; eighty-three, I believe, in 
all. I had seen a bust of Julius Csesar in the British 
Museum, and was surprised at its thin and withered 
aspect; but this head is of a very ugly old man indeed, 
— wrinkled, puckered, shrunken, lacking breadth and 
substance ; careworn, grim, as if he had fought hard 
with life, and had suffered in the conflict ; a man of 
schemes, and of eager effort to bring his schemes to 
pass. His profile is by no means good, advancing 
from the top of his forehead to the tip of his nose, and 
retreating, at about the same angle, from the latter 



1858.] ITALY. 99 

point to the bottom of his chin, which seems to be 
thrust forcibly down into his meagre neck, — not that 
he pokes his head forward, however, for it is partic- 
ularly erect. 

The head of Augustus is very beautiful, and appears 
to be that of a meditative, philosophic man, sad- 
dened with the sense that it is not very much worth 
while to be at the summit of human gi'eatness after all. 
It is a sorrowful thing to trace the decay of civilization 
through this series of busts, and to observe how the 
artistic skill, so requisite at first, went on declining 
through the dreary dynasty of the Csesars, till at 
length the master of the world could not get his head 
carved in better style than the figure-head of a ship. 

In the next room there were better statues than we 
had yet seen ; but in the last room of the range we 
found the '' Dying Gladiator," of which I had already 
caught a glimpse in passing by the open door. It had 
made all the other treasures of the gallery tedious in 
my eagerness to come to that. I do not believe that 
so much pathos is wrought into any other block of 
stone. Like all works of the highest excellence, how- 
ever, it makes great demands upon the spectator. 
He must make a generous gift of his sympathies to 
the sculptor, and help out his skill wnth all his heart, 
or else he will see little more than a skilfully wrought 
surface. It suggests far more than it shows. I looked 
long at this statue, and little at anything else, though, 
among other famous works, a statue of Antinoiis was 
in the same room. 

I was glad when we left the museum, which, by the . 



100 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858- 

by, was piercingly chill, as if the multitude of statue|, 
radiated cold out of their marble substance. W^ 
might have gone to see the pictures in the Palace of-l 

the Conservatori, and S , whose receptivity is^l 

unlimited and forever fresh, would willingly have , 
done so ; but I objected, and we went towards the 
Forum. I had noticed^ two or three times, an in- 
scription over a mean-looking door in this neighbor- 
hood) stating that here was the entrance to the prison' 
of the holy apostles, Peter and Paul ; and we soon 
found the spot, not far from the Forum, with two 
wretched frescos of the apostles above the inscription, i 
We knocked at the door without effect ; but a lame 
beggar, who sat at another door of the same house 
(which looked exceedingly like a liquor shop), desired 
us to follow him, and began to ascend to the Capitol^ 
by the causeway leading from the Forum. A little 
way upward we met a woman, to whom the beggar 
delivered us overj and she led us into a church of 
chapel door, and pointed to a long flight of steps,' 
which descended through twilight into utter darkness* 
She called to somebody in the lower regions, and then 
went away, leaving us to get down this mysterious 
staircase by ourselves. Down we went, farther and 
farther from the daylight, and found ourselves, anon, 
in a dark chamber or cell, the shape or boundaries of • '' 
which we could not make out, though it seemed to bd 
of stone, and black and dungeon-like. Indistinctly, 
and from a still farther depth in the earth, we heard 
voices, — one voice, at least, — apparently not address- 
ing ourselves, but some other persons ; and soon, directly 



1658.] ITALY. 101 

^beneath our feet, we saw a glimmering of light 
^ through a round, iron-grated hole in the bottom of 
^ tii^ dungeon. In a few moments the glimmer and 
thfe voice came up through this hole, and the light 
disappeared, and it and the voice came glimmering 
and babbling up a flight of stone stairs, of which we 
had not hitherto been aware. It was the custode, 
• with a party of visitors, to whom he had been showing 
St. Peter's dungeon. Each visitor Was provided with 
a wax taper, and the custode gave one to each of us, 
bidding us wait a moment while he conducted the 
other party to the upper air. During his absence we 
examined the CeU, as well as our dim lights would 
permit, and soon found an indentation in the wall, 
with an iron grate put over it for protection, and an 
inscription above informing us that the Apostle Peter 
had here left the imprint of his visage ; and, in truth, 
there is a profile there, — forehead, nos6, mouth, and 
chin, — plainly to be seen, an intaglio in the solid rock. 
We touched it with the tips of our fingers, as well as 
saw it with our eyes. 

The Custode soon returned, and led us down the 
darksome steps, chattering in Italian all the time. 
It is not a very long descent to the lower cell, the 
roof of which is so low that I believe I could have 
reached it with my hand. We were now in the 
deepest and ugliest part of the old Mamertine Prison^ 
one of the few remains of the kingly period of Kome, 
and which served the Romans as a state prison for 
hundreds of years before the Christian era. A multi- 
tude of fcriminals or ifinocent persons, no doubt, have 



102 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

languished here in misery, and perished in darkness. 
Here Jugurtha starved ; here Catiline's adherents 
were strangled ; and, methinks, there cannot be in 
the world another such an evil den, so haunted with 
black memories and indistinct surmises of guilt and 
suffering. In old Rome, I suppose, the citizens never 
spoke of this dungeon above their breath. It looks 
just as bad as it is ; round, only seven paces across, 
yet so obscure that our tapers could not illuminate it 
from side to side, — the stones of which it is con- 
structed being as black as midnight. The custode 
showed us a stone post, at the side of the cell, with 
the hole in the top of it, into which, he said, St. 
Peter's chain had been fastened ; and he uncovered 
a spring of water, in the middle of the stone floor, 
which he told us had miraculously gushed up to 
enable the saint to baptize his jailer. The miracle 
was perhaps the more easily wrought, inasmuch as 
Jugurtha had found the floor of the dungeon oozy 
with wet. However, it is best to be as simple and 
childlike as we can in these matters ; and whether 
St. Peter stamped his visage into the stone, and 
wrought this other miracle or no, and whether or no 
he ever was in the prison at all, still the belief of a 
thousand years and more gives a sort of reality and 
substance to such traditions. The custode dipped an 
iron ladle into the miraculous water, and we each of 
us drank a sip ; and, what is very remarkable, to me it 
seemed hard water and almost brackish, while many 
persons think it the sweetest in Rome. I suspect 
that St. Peter still dabbles in this water, and tempers 



1858.] ITALY. 103 

its qualities according to the faith of those who 
drink it. 

The staircase descending into the lower dungeon is 
comparatively modern, there having been no entrance 
of old, except through the small circular opening in 
the roof In the upper cell the custod'e showed us an 
ancient flight of stairs, now built into the wall, which 
used to lead from the Capitol. The whole precincts 
are now consecrated, and I believe the upper portion, 
perhaps both upper and lower, are a shrine or a chapel. 

I now left S in the Forum, and went to call on 

Mr. J. P. K at the Hotel d'Europe. I found him 

just returned from a drive, — a gentleman of about 
sixty, or more, with gray hair, a pleasant, intellectual 
face, and penetrating, but not unkindly eyes. He 
moved infirmly, being on the recovery from an illness. 
We went up to his saloon together, and had a talk, — or, 
rather, he had it nearly all to himself, — and particu- 
larly sensible talk, too, and full of the results of learn- 
ing and experience. In the first place, he settled the 
whole Kansas difficulty ; then he made havoc of St. 
Peter, who came very shabbily out of his hands, as 
regarded his early character in the Church, and his 

claims to the position he now holds in it. Mr. K 

also gave a curious illustration, from something that 
happened to himself, of the little dependence that can 
be placed on tradition purporting to be ancient, and I 
capped his story by telling him how the site of my 
town pump, so plainly indicated in the sketch itself, 
has already been mistaken in the city council and in 
the public prints. 



104 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

Fehtuary ^Ath. — Yesterday 1 crossed the Ponte 
Sisto, and took a short ramble on the other sid6 of th;6 
river ; and it rather surpi-ised me to discover, pretty 
nearly opposite the CapitoliniB Hill, a quay, at which 
several schooners and barks, of two or three hundred 
tons' burdeUj were moored. There was also a steamer, 
armed with a large gun and two brass swivels on her 
forecastle, and I know not what artillery besides. 
Probably she may have been a revenue-cutter. 

Returning I crossed the river by way of the island 
of St. Bartholomew orer two bridges. The island is 
densely covered with buildings, and is a separate 
small fragment of the city. It was a tradition of the 
ancient Romans that it was formed by the aggregation 
of soil and rubbish brought down by the river, and 
accumulating round the nucleus of some sunken 
baskets. 

On reaching the hither side of the river, I soon 
struck upon the ruins of the theatre of Marcellus, 
which are very pictur-esque, and the more so from 
being closely linked in, indeed, identified with the 
shops, habitations, and swarming life of modem Ronie. 
The most striking portion was a circular edifice, which 
seemed to have been composed of a row of Ionic col- 
umns, standing upon a lower row of Doric^ many of 
the antique pillars being yet pierfect ; bikt the inter- 
vening arches built up with brickwork, and the whole 
once magnificent structure now tenanted by poor and 
squalid people, as thick as mites within the round of 
an old cheese. From this point I cannot very clearly 
trace out my course j but I passed, I think, between 



1858.] ITALY. 105 

the Citcus Maximus and the Palace of the Csesai-s, 
and near the Baths of Caracalla, and went into the 
cloisters of the Church of San Gregorio. All along I 
saw massive ruins, not particularly picturesque or 
beautiful, but huge, mountainous piles, chiefly of 
brickwork, somewhat weed-grown here and there, but 

oftener bare and dreary All the STiccessiviB 

ages since Rome began to decay have done their best 
to I'uin the vei*y ruins by taking away the marble and 
the hewn stone for their own structures, and leaving 
only the inner filling up of brickwork, which the ancient 
architects never designed to be seen. The consequence 
of all this is, that, except for the lofty and poetical 
associations connected with it, and except, too, for the 
immense difference in magnitude, a Roman ruin may 
be in itself not more picturesque than I have seen 
an old cellar, with a shattered brick chimney half 
crumbling down into it, in New England. 

By this time I knew not whither I was going, and 
turned aside from a broad, paved road (it was the 
Appian Way) into the Via Latina, which I supposed 
would lead to one of the city gates. It was a lonely 
path : on my right hand extensive piles of ruin, in 
strange shapes ot shapelessness, built of the broad and 
thin old Roman bricks, such as may be traced every- 
where, when the stucco has fallen away from a mod- 
ern Roman house ; for I imagine there has not been a 
netv brick made here for a thousand years. On my 
left, I think. Was a high wall, and before me, grazing 
in the road .... [the buffalo calf of the Marble Faun. 
— Ed.]. The road went boldly on, with a well-worn 
5* 



106 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

track up to the very walls of the city ; but there if? 
abruptly terminated at an ancient, closed-up gateway. 
From a notice posted against a door, which appeared 
to be the entrance to the ruins on my left, I found 
that these were the remains of Columbaria, where the 
dead used to be put away in pigeon-holes. Reaching 
the paved road again, I kept on my course, passing 
the tomb of the Scipios, and soon came to the gate 
of San Sebastiano, through which I entered the 
Campagna. Indeed, the scene around was so rural, 
that I had fancied myself already beyond the walls. 
As the afternoon was getting advanced, I did not 
proceed any farther towards the blue hills which I 
saw in the distance, but turned to my left, following 
a road that runs round the exterior of the city wall. 
It was very dreary and solitary, — not a house on the 
whole track, with the broad and shaggy Campagna on 
one side, and the high, bare wall, looking down over 
my head, on the other. It is not, any more than the 
other objects of the scene, a very picturesque wall, but 
is little more than a brick garden-fence seen through 
a magnify ing-glass, with now and then a tower, how- 
ever, and frequent buttresses, to keep its height of 
fifty feet from toppling ower. The top was ragged, 
and fringed with a few weeds ; there had been embra- 
sures for guns and eyelet holes for musketry, but 
these were plastered up with brick or stone. I passed 
one or two walled-up gateways (by the by, the Porta 
Latina was the gate through which Belisarius first 
entered Home), and one of these had two high, round 
towers, and looked more Gothic and venerable with 



1858.] ITALY. 107 

antique strength than any other portion of the wall. 
Immediately after this I came to the gate of Sau 
Giovanni, just within which is the Basilica of St. John 
Lateran, and there I was glad to rest myself upon a 
bench before proceeding homeward. 

There was a French sentinel at this gateway, as at 
all the others ; for the Gauls have always been a pest 
to Rome, and now gall her worse than ever. I ob- 
served, too, that an official, in citizen's dress, stood 
there also, and appeared to exercise a supervision over 
some carts with country produce, that were entering 
just then. 

February 2btli. — "VVe went this forenoon to the 
Palazzo Borghese, which is situated on a street that 
runs at right angles with the Corso, and very near 
the latter. Most of the palaces in Rome, and the 
Borghese among them, were built somewhere about 
the sixteenth century; this in 1590, I believe. It is 
an immense edifice, standing round the four sides of 
a quadrangle ; and though the suite of rooms com- 
prising the picture-gaUery forms an almost intermi- 
nable vista, they occupy only a part of the ground floor 
of one side. We enter from the street into a large 
court, surrounded with a corridor, the arches of which 
support a second series of arches above. The picture- 
rooms open from one into another, and have many 
points of magnificence, being large and lofty, with 
vaulted ceilings and beautiful frescos, generally of 
mythological subjects, in the flat central part of the 
vault. The cornices are gilded ; the deep embrasures 
of the windows are panelled with wood-work ; tlie 



108 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

(i<)bi*Ways are of polished and variegated marble, or 
covered with a composition as hai^, and seemingly as 
durable. The whole has a kind of splendid shabbi- 
ness thrown over it, like a slight coating of rust ; the 
furniture, at least the damask chairs, being a good 
deal wofii, though there are mji,rble and mosaic tables, 
which may serve to adorn another palace when thi^ 
oiie crumbles away with age. One beautifiil hall, 
with a ceiling more richly gilded than the rest, is 
panelled all found with large looking-glasses, on which 
are paiiited pictures, both landscapes taiid human fig- 
ures, in oils ; so that the effect is somewhat as if you 
^aw these objects i-epresented in the mirrofs. These 
glasses must ba of old dat^ perhaps coeval with tk^ 
first building of the palace ; for they are so much 
dimmed, that one's own figure appears indistinct in 
them, and more difficult to be traced than the pictures 
which cover them half over. It was very comfortless, 
— indeed, I suppose nobody ever thought of being 
comfortable there, since the house was built, — - but 
especially uncomfortable on a chill, damp day like 
this. My fingers were quite numb before I got half^ 
way through the suite of apartments, in spite of h 
brazier of charcoal which was smouldering into ashes 
in two or three of the rooms. There was not, so far 
as I remembet", a single fireplace in the suite. A con- 
siderable number of visitors — not many, however — 
were there ; and a good many artists ; and three or four 
ladies among them were making copies of the more 
celebrated pictures, and in all or in most cases miss- 
ing the especial points that made their celebrity and 



1858.] ITALY, 109 

value. The Prince Boi^hese certainty demeans him* 
self like a kind and liberal gentleman, in throwing 
open this invaluable collection to the public to see, 
and for artists to carry away with them, and. diflTuse 
all over the world, so far as their own power and skill 
will permit. It is open every day Of the week, except 
Saturday and Sunday, without any irksome i-estrictibn 
or supervision ; and the fee, which custom requires 
the visitor to pay to the custode, has the good effect 
of making us feel that we are not intruders, nor re- 
ceived in ^n exactly eleemosynary way. The thing 
could not be better managed* 

The collection is one of the most celebrated in the 
world, and contains between eight and nine hundred 
pictures, many of which are esteemed masterpieces. I 
think I was not in a frame for admiration to-day, not* 
could achieve that free and genisrous surt-ender of 
myself which I have already said is essetitial to the 
proper estimate of anything excellent. Besides, how 
is it possible to give one's soul, or any considerable 
part of it, to a single picture, seen for the first time, 
among a thousand others, all of which set forth their 
own claims in an equally good light 1 Furthermore, 
there is an external weariness, and sense of a thou- 
sand-fold sameness to be overcome, before we can begin 
to enjoy a gallery of the old Italian masters. . . . . 
I remember but one painterj Francia, who seems 
really to have approached this awful class of subjects 
(Christs and Madonnas) in a fitting spirit ; his pic- 
tures are very singular and awkward, if you look at 
them with merely an external eye, but they are full 



no FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

of the beauty of holiness, and evidently wrought out 
as acts of devotion, with the deepest sincerity; and 
are veritable prayers upon canvas 

I was glad, in the very last of the twelve rooms, to 
come upon some Dutch and Flemish pictures, very 
few, but very welcome; Rubens, Rembrandt, Van- 
dyke, Paul Potter, Teniers, and others, — men of flesh 
and blood and w^arm fists, and human hearts. As 
compared with them, these mighty Italian masters 
seem men of polished steel ; not human, nor address- 
ing themselves so much to human sympathies, as to 
a formed, intellectual taste. 

March \st. — To-day began very unfavorably; but 
we ventured out at about eleven o'clock, intending to 
visit the gallery of the Colonna Palace. Finding it 
closed, however, on account of the illness of the cus- 
tode, we determined to go to the picture-gallery of the 
Capitol ; and, on our way thither, we stepped into St. 
Gesii, the grand and rich church of the Jesuits, where 
we found a priest in white, preaching a sermon, with 
vast earnestness of action and variety of tones, inso- 
much that I fancied sometimes that two priests were 
in the agony of sermonizing at once. He had a pretty 
large and seemingly attentive audience clustered 
round him from the entrance of the church, half-way 
down the nave ; while in the chapels of the transepts 
and in the remoter distances were persons occupied 
with their own individual devotion. We sat down 
near the chapel of St. Ignazio, which is adorned with 
a picture over the altar, and with marble sculptures 
of the Trinity aloft, and of angels fluttering at the 



1858. ITALY. Ill 

sides. What I particularly noted (for the angels were 
not very real personages, being neither earthly nor 
celestial) was the great ball of lapis lazuli, the biggest 
in the world, at the feet of the First Person in the 
Trinity. The church is a splendid one, lined with a 
great variety of precious marbles, .... but partly, 
perhaps, owing to the dusky light, as well as to the 
want of cleanliness, there was a dingy effect upon the 
whole. We made but a very short stay, our New 
England breeding causing us to feel shy of moving 
about the church in sermon time. 

It rained when we reached the Capitol, and, as the 
museum was not yet open, we went into the Palace 
of the Conservators, on the opposite side of the 
piazza. Around the inner court of the ground floor, 
partly under two opposite arcades, and partly under 
the sky, are several statues and other ancient sculp- 
tures ; among them a statue of Julius Csesar, said to 
be the only authentic one, and certainly giving an 
impression of him more in accordance with his 
character than the withered old face in the museum ; 
also, a statue of Augustus in middle age, still re- 
taining a resemblance to the bust of him in youth ; 
some gigantic heads and hands and feet in marble 
and bronze ; a stone lion and horse, which lay long 
at the bottom of a river, broken and corroded, and 
were repaired by Michel Angelo ; and other things 
which it were wearisome to set down. We inquired 
of two or three French soldiers the way into the 
picture-gallery ; but it is our experience that French 
soldiers in Rome never know anything of what is. 



U2 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858; 

around them, not even the name of the palace 6r 
public place over which they stand guard ; and though 
invariably civil, you might as well put a question to 
a statue of an old Roman as to one of them. While 
we stood under the loggia, however, looking at the 
rain plashing into the court, a soldier of the Papal 
Guard kindly directed us up the staircase, and even 
took pains to go with us to the very entrance of the 
picture-rooms. Thank heaven, there are but two of 
them, and not many pictures which one cares to look 
at very long. 

Italian galleries are at a disadvantage as compared 
with English ones, inasmuch as the pictures are not 
nearly such splendid articles of upholstery ; though, 
very likely, having undergone less cleaning and var- 
nishing, they may retain more perfectly the finer 
touches of the masters. Nevertheless, I miss the 
mellow glow, the rich and mild external lustre, and 
even the brilliant frames of the pictures I have seen 
in England. You feel that they have had loving care 
taken of them ; even if spoiled, it is because they 
have been valued so much. But these pictures in 
Italian galleries look rusty and lustreless, as far as 
the exterior is concerned ; and, really, the splendor 
of the painting, as a production of intellect and 
feeling, has a good deal of difficulty in shining 
through such clouds. 

There is a picture at the Capitol, the "Rap6 of 
Europa," by Paul Veronese, that would glow with 
wonderful brilliancy if it were set in a magnificent 
frame, and covered with a isunshine of varnish; aiid 



1858] ITALY. 11^ 

it is a kind of picture that would not be desecrated, 
as some deeper and holier ones might be, by any 
splendor of external adornment that could be be- 
stowed on it. It is deplorable and disheartening to 
see it in faded and shabby plight, — this joyous, exu- 
beraiit) warm^ voluptuous work. There is the head 
of a cow, thrust into the picture, and staring with 
wild, ludicrous wonder at the godlike bull, so as to 
introduce quite a new sentiment. 

Here, and at the Borghese Palace, there were some 
pictures by Garofalo, an artist of whom I never heard 
before, but who seemed to have been a man of power. 
A picture by Marie Sublegras — - a miniature Copy 
from one by her husband, of the woman anointing 
the feet of Christ -— is most delicately and beautifully 
finished, and would be an ornament to a drawing- 
room ; a thing that Could not truly be said of one in 
a hundred of these grim masterpieces. When they 
were painted life was not what it is now, and the 
artists had not the same ends in view. .... It 
depresses the spirits to go from picture to picture, 
leaving a portion of your vital sympathy at every 
one, so that you come, with a kind of half-torpid 
desperation, to the end. On our way down the stair- 
case we saw several noteworthy bas-reliefs, and among 
them a very ancient one of Curtius plunging on horse- 
back into the chasm in the Forum. It seems to me, 
however, that old scidpture affects the spirits even 
more dolefully than old painting ; it strikes colder to 
the heart, and lies heavier upon it^ being marble, than 
if it were merely canvas. 



lU FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

My wife went to revisit the museum, which we had 
already seen, on the other side of the piazza ; but, 
being cold, I left her there, and went out to ramble 
in the sun ; for it was now brightly, though fitfully, 
shining again. I walked through the Forum (where 
a thorn thrust itself out and tore the sleeve of my 
talma), and under the Arch of Titus, towards the 
Coliseum. About a score of French drummers were 
beating a long, loud roll-call, at the base of the 
Coliseum, and under its arches ; and a score of 
trumpeters responded to these, from the rising 
ground opposite the Arch of Constantine ; and the 
echoes of the old Roman ruins, especially those of 
the Palace of the Ceesars, responded to this martial 
uproar of the barbarians. There seemed to be no 
cause for it ; but the drummers beat, and the trum- 
peters blew, as long as I was within hearing. 

I walked along the Appian Way as far as the 
Baths of Caracalla. The Palace of the Csesars, which 
I have never yet explored, appears to be crowned by 
the walls of a convent, built, no doubt, out of some of 
the fragments that would suffice to build a city ■ and 
I think there is another convent among the baths. 
The Catholics have taken a peculiar pleasure in 
planting themselves in the very citadels of paganism, 
whether temples or palaces. There has been a good 
deal of enjoyment in the destruction of old Rome. I 
often think so when I see the elaborate pains that 
have been taken to smash and demolish some 
beautiful column, for no purpose whatever, except 
the mere delight of annihilating a noble piece of 



1858.] ITALY. 115 

work. There is something in the impulse with which 
one sympathizes ; though I am afraid the destroyers 
were not sufficiently aware of the mischief they did 
to enjoy it fully. Probably, too, the early Christians 
were impelled by religious zeal to destroy the pagan 
temples, before the happy thought occurred of con- 
verting them into churches. 

March 3d. — This morning was U 's birthday, 

and we celebrated it by taking a barouche, and 
driving (the whole family) out on the Appian Way 
as far as the tomb of Cecelia Metella. For the first 
time since we came to Rome, the weather was really 
warm, — a kind of heat producing languor and dis- 
inclination to active movement, though still a little 
breeze which was stirring threw an occasional cool- 
ness over us, and made us distrust the almost sultry 
atmosphere. I cannot think the Roman climate 
healthy in any of its moods that I have experienced. 

Close on the other side of the road are the ruins 
of a Gothic chapel, little more than a few bare walls 
and painted windows, and some other fragmentary 
structures which we did not particularly examine. 

U and I clambered through a gap in the wall, 

extending from the basement of the tomb, and thus, 
getting into the field beyond, went quite round the 
mausoleum and the remains of the castle connected 
with it. The latter, though still high and stalwart, 
showed few or no architectural features of interest, 
being built, I think, principally of large bricks, and 
not to be compared to English ruins as a beautiful 
or venerable object. 



116 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

A little way beyond Cecelia Metella's tomb, the 
road still shows a specimen of the ancient Roman 
pavement, composed of broad, flat flagstones, a good 
deal cracked and worn, but sound enough, probably, 
to outlast the little cubes which make the other por- 
tiona of th^ road so uncomfortable. We turned back 
from this point and soon re-entered the gate of St. 
Sebastian, which is flanked by two small towers, and 
just within which is the old triumphal arch of Drusus, 
— a sturdy construction, much dilapidated as regards 
its architectural beauty, but rendered far more pic- 
turesque than it could have been in its best days by 
a crown of verdure on its head. Probably so much 
of the dust of the highway has risen in clouds and 
settled there, that sufficient soil for shrubbery to 
root itself has thus been collected, by small annual 
contributions, in the course of two thousand years. 
A little farther towards the city we turned aside 
from the Appian Way, and came to the site of some 
ancient Columbaria, close by what seemed to partake 
of the character of a villa and a farm-house. A man 
came out of the house and unlocked a door in a low 
building, apparently quite modern ; but on entering 
we found ourselves looking into a large, square 
chamber, sunk entirely beneath the siuface of the 
ground. A very narrow and steep staircase of stone, 
and evidently ancient, descended into this chamber ; 
and, going down, we found the walls hollowed on 
all sides into little semicircular niches, of which, 
I believe, there were nine rows, one above another, 
and nine niches in each row. Thus they looked 



1858.] ITALY. 117 

somewhat like the little entrances to a pigeon-house, 
and hence the name of Columbarium. Each semi- 
circular niche was about a foot in its semidiameter. 
In the centre of this subterranean chamber was a 
solid square column, or pier, rising to the roof, and 
containing other niches of the same pattern, besides 
one that was high and deep, rising to the height 
of a man from the floor on each of the four sides. 
In every one of the semicircular niches were two 
round holes covered with an earthen plate, and in 
each hole were ashes and little fragments of bones, — 
the ashes and bones of the dead, whose names were 
inscribed in Roman capitals on marble slabs inlaid 
into the wall over each individual niche. Very likely 
the great ones in the central pier had contained 
statues, or busts, or large urns ; indeed, I remember 
that some such things were there, as well as bas- 
reliefs in the walls ; but hardly more than the general 
aspect of this strange place, remains in my mind. 
It was the Columbarium of the connections or de- 
pendants of the Csesars ; and the impression left 
on me was, that this mode of disposing of the dead 
was infinitely preferable to any which has been 
adopted since that day. The handful or two of dry 
dust and bits of dry bones in each of the small round 
holes had nothing disgusting in them, and they are 
no drier now than they were when first deposited 
there. I would rather have my ashes scattered over 
the soil to help the growth of the grass and daisies ; 
but still I should not murmur much at having them 
decently pigeon-holed in a Roman tomb. 



118 FEENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l8oa 

After ascending out of this chamber of the dead, we 
looked down into another similar one, containing the 
ashes of Pompey's household, which was discovered 
only a very few years ago. Its arrangement w^as the 
same as that first described, except that it had no cen- 
tral pier with a passage round it, as the former had. 

While we were down in the first chamber the pro- 
prietor of the spot — a half-gentlemanl}^ and very 
affable kind of person — came to us, and explained 
the arrangements of the Cohimbarium, though, indeed 
we understood them, better by their own aspect than 
by his explanation. Tiie whole soil around his dwell- 
ing is elevated much above the level of the road, and 
it is probable that, if he chose to excavate, he might 
bring to light many more sepulchral chambers, and 
find his profits in them too, by disposing of the urns 
and busts. What struck me as much as anything 
was the neatness of these subterranean apartments, 
which were quite as fit to sleep in as most of those 
occupied by living Romans ; and, having undergone no 
wear and tear, they were in as good condition as on 
the day they were built. 

In this Columbarium, measuring about twenty 
feet square, I roughly estimate that there have been 
deposited together the remains of at least seven 
or eight hundred persons, reckoning two little heaps 
of bones and ashes in each pigeon-hole, nine pigeon- 
holes in each row, and nine rows on each side, besides 
those on the middle pier. All difficulty in finding 
space for the dead would be obviated by returning to 
the ancient fashion of reducing them to ashes, — the 



1858.] ITALY. 119 

only objection, though a very serious one, being the 
quantity of fuel that it would require. But perhaps 
future chemists may discover some better means of con- 
suming or dissolving this troublesome mortality of ours. 
We got into the carriage again, and, driving farther 
towards the city, came to the tomb of the Scipios, of 
the exterior of which I retain no very definite idea. 
It was close upon the Appian Way, -however, though 
separated from it by a high fence, and accessible 
through a gateway, leading into a court. I think the 
tomb is wholly subten-anean, and that the ground 
above it is covered with the buildings of a farm-house; 
but of this I cannot be certain, as we were led imme- 
diately into a dark, underground passage, by an elderly 
peasant, of a cheerful and affable demeanor. As soon 
as he had brought us into the twilight of the tomb, 
he lighted a long wax taper for each of us, and led 
us groping into blacker and blacker darkness. Even 

little R followed courageously in the procession, 

which looked very picturesque as we glanced back- 
ward or forward, and beheld a twinkling line of seven 
lights, glimmering faintly on our faces, and showing 
nothing beyond. The passages and niches of the 
tomb seem to have been hewn and hollowed out of 
the rock, not bi^lt by any art of masonry; but the 
walls were very dark, almost black, and our tapers so 
dim that I could not gain a sufficient breadth of view 
to ascertain what kind of place it was. It was very 
dark, indeed ; the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky could 
not be darker. The rough-hewn roof was within 
touch, and sometimes we had to stoop to avoid hit- 



120 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

ting our heads ; it was covered with damps, which 
collected and fell upon us in occasional drops. The 
passages, besides being nari'ow, were so irregular and 
crooked, that, after going a little way, it would have 
been impossible to return upon our steps without the 
help of the guide ; and we appeared to be taking 
quite an extensive ramble underground, though in re- 
ality I suppose the tomb includes no great space. At 
several turns of our dismal way, the guide pointed to 
inscriptions in Roman capitals, commemorating vari- 
ous members of the Scipio family who were buried 
here ; among them, a son of Scipio Africanus, who 
himself had his death and burial in a foreign land. 
All these inscriptions, however, are copies, — the origi- 
nals, which were really found here, having been re- 
moved to the Vatican. Whether any bones and ashes 
have been left, or whether any were found, I do not 
know. It is not, at all events, a particularly interest- 
ing spot, being such shapeless blackness, and a mere 
dark hole, requiring a stronger illumination than that 
of our tapers to distinguish it from any other cellar. 
I did, at one place, see a sort of frieze, rather roughly 
sculptured ; and, as we returned towards the twilight 
of the entrance-passage, I discerned a large spider, 
who fled hastily away from our tapers, — the solitary 
living inhabitant of the tomb of the Scipios. 

One visit that we made, and T think it was before 
entering the city gates, I forgot to mention. It was 
to an old edifice, formerly called the Temple of Bac- 
chus, but now supposed to have been the Temple of 
Virtue and Honor. The interior consists of a vaulted 



1858.] ITALY. 121 

hall, which was converted from its pagan consecration 
into a church or chapel, by the early Christians ; and 
the ancient marble pillars of the temple may still be 
seen built in with the brick and stucco of the later 
occupants. There is an altar, and other tokens of a 
Catholic church, and high towards the ceiling, there 
are some frescos of saints or angels, very curious 
specimens of mediaeval, and earlier than mediaeval art. 
Nevertheless, the place impressed me as still rather 
pagan than Christian. What is most remarkable 
about this spot or this vicinity lies in the fact that 
the Fountain of Egeria was formerly supposed to be 
close mt hand ; indeed, the custode of the chapel still 
claims the spot as the identical one consecrated by the 
legend. There is a dark grove of trees, not far from 
the door of the temple ; but Murray, a highly essential 
nuisance on such excursions as this, throws such over- 
whelming doubt, or rather incredulity, upon the site, 
that I seized upon it as a pretext for not going thither. 
In fact, my small capacity for sight-seeing was already 
more than satisfied. 

On account of 1 am sorry that we did not see 

the grotto, for her enthusiasm is as fresh as the waters 
of Egeria's well can be, and she has poetical faith 
enough to light her cheerfully through all these mists 
of incredulity. 

Our visits to sepulchral places ended with Scipio's 
tomb, whence we returned to our dwelling, and Miss 
M came to dine with us. 

March lO^A. — On Saturday last, a very rainy day, 
we went to the Sciarra Palace, and took U with 

VOL. I. 6 



122 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

IIS. It is on the Corso, nearly opposite to the Piazza 
Colonna. It has (Heaven be praised!) but four rooms 
of pictures, among which, however, are several very 
celebrated ones. Only a few of these remain in my 
memory, — Raphael's '' Violin Player," which I am 
willing to accept as a good picture .; and Leonardo da 
Vinci's '^ Vanity and Modesty," which also I can bring 
up before my mind's eye, and find it very beautiful, 
although one of the faces has an affected smile, which 
I have since seen on another picture by the same artist,' 
Joanna of Arragon. The most striking picture in the 
collection, I think, is Titian's "Bella Donna," — the 
only one of Titian's works that I have yet seen which 
makes an impression on me corresponding with hi^ 
fame. It is a very splendid and very scornful ladyi 
as beautiful and as scornful as Gainsborough's Lady 
Lyndoch, though of an entirely different type. There 
were two Madonnas by Guide, of which I liked the 
least celebrated one best ; and several pictures by 
Garofalo, who always produces something noteworthy. 
All the pictures lacked the charm (no doubt I am a 
barbarian to think it one) of being in brilliant frames, 
and looked as if it were a long, long while since they 
were cleaned or varnished. The light was so scanty, 
too, on that heavily clouded day, and in those gloomy 
old rooms of the palace, that scarcely anything could 
be fairly made out. 

[I cannot refrain from observing here, that Mr. 
Hawthorne's inexorable demand for perfection in all 
things leads him to complain of grimy pictures and 
taraished frames and faded frescos, distressing be- 



J 858.] ITALY. 123 

yond measure to eyes that never failed to see every- 
thing before him with the keenest apprehension. The 
usual careless observ&,tion of people both of the good 
and the imperfect is much more comfortable in this 
imperfect world. But the insight which Mr. Haw- 
thorne possessed was only equalled by his outsight, 
and he suffered in a way not to be readily conceived, 
from any failure in beauty, physical, moral, or intel- 
lectual. It is not, therefore, mere love of upholstery 
that impels him to ask for perfect settings to priceless 
gems of art ; but a native idiosyncrasy, which always 
made me feel that " the New Jerusalem," " even like a 
jasper stone, clear as crystal," " where shall in no wise 
enter anything that defileth, neither what worketh 
abomination nor maketh a lie," would alone satisfy 
him, or rather alone not give him actual pain. It 
may give an idea of this exquisite nicety of feeling to 
mention, that one day he took in his fingers a half- 
bloomed rose, without blemish, and, smiling with an 
infinite joy, remarked, " This is perfect. On earth a 
flower only can be perfect." — Ed.] 

The palace is about two hundred and fifty years 
old, and looks as if it had never been a very cheerful 
place ; most shabbily and scantily furnished, moreover, 
and as chill as any cellar. There is a small balcony, 
looking down on the Corso, which probably has often 
been filled with a merry little family party, in the 
carnivals of days long past. It has faded frescos, 
and tarnished gilding, and green blinds, and a few 
damask chairs still remain in it. 

On Monday we all went to the sculpture-gallery of 



124 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

the Vatican, and saw as much of the sculpture as we 
could in the three hours during which the public are 
admissible. There were a few things which I really 
enjoyed, and a few moments during which I really 
seemed to see them ; but it is in vain to 'attempt 
giving the impression produced by masterpieces of 
art, and most in vain when we see them best. They 
are a language in themselves, and if they could be 
expressed as well any way except by themselves, there 
would have been no need of expressing those particular 
ideas and sentiments by sculpture. I saw the Apollo 
Belvidere as something ethereal and godlike ; only for 
a flitting moment, however, and as if he had alighted 
from heaven, or shone suddenly out of the sunlight, 
and then had withdrawn himself again. I felt the 
Laocoon very powerfully, though very quietly ; an 
immortal agony, with a strange calmness diffused 
through it, so that it resembles the vast rage of the 
sea, calm on account of its immensity ; or the tumult 
of Niagara, which does not seem to be tumult, because 
it keeps pouring on for ever and ever. I have not 
had so good a day as this (among works of art) since 
we came to Rome ; and I impute it partly to the 
magnificence of the arrangements of the Vatican, — its 
long vistas and beautiful courts, and the aspect of 
immortality which marble statues acquire by being 
kept free from dust. A very hungry boy, seeing in 
one of the cabinets a vast porphyry vase, forty -four 
feet in circumference, wished that he had it full of 
soup. 

Yesterday, we went to the Pamfili Doria Palace, 



1858.] ITALY. 125 

which, I believe, is the most splendid in Rome. The 
entrance is from the Corso into a court, surrounded 
by a colonnade, and having a s]3ace of luxuriant ver- 
dure and ornamental shrubbery in the centre. The 
apartments containing pictures and sculptures are 
fifteen in number, and run quite round the court in 
the first piano, — all the rooms, halls, and galleries of 
beautiful proportion, with vaulted roofs, some of which 
glow with frescos ; and all are colder and more com- 
fortless than can possibly be imagined without having 
been in them. The pictures, most of them, interested 
me very little. I am of opinion that good pictures 
are quite as rare as good poets ; and I do not see 
why we should pique ourselves on admiring any 
but the very best. One in a thousand, perhaps, ought 
to live in the applause of men, from generation to 
generation, till its colors fade or blacken out of sight, 
and its canvas rots away ; the rest should be put in 
garrets, or painted over by newer artists, just as 
tolerable poets are shelved when their little day is 
over. Nevertheless, there was one long gallery con- 
taining many pictures that I should be glad to see 
again under more favorable circumstances, that is, 
separately, and where I might contemplate them 
quite undisturbed, reclining in an easy-chair. At one 
end of the long vista of this gallery is a bust of the 
present Prince Doria, a smooth, sharp-nosed, rather 
handsome young man, and at the other end his 
princess, an English lady of the Talbot family, ap- 
parently a blonde, with a simple and sweet expression. 
There is a noble and striking portrait of the old 



126 FEENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

Venetian admiral, Andrea Doria, by Sebastian del 
Piombo, and some other portraits and busts of the 
family. 

In the whole immense range of rooms I saw but a 
single fireplace, and that so deep in the wall that no 
amount of blaze would raise the atmosphere of the 
room ten degrees. If the builder of the palace, or 
any of his successors, have committed crimes worthy 
of Tophet, it would be a still worse punishment for 
him to wander perpetually through this suite of rooms 
on the cold floors of polished brick tiles or marble or 
mosaic, growing a little chiller and chiller through 
every moment of eternit}^ — or, at least, till the palace 
crumbles down upon him. 

Neither would it assuage his torment in the least 
to be compelled to gaze up at the dark old pictures, — 
the ugly ghosts of what may once have been beautiful. 
I am not going to try any more to receive pleasure 
from a faded, tarnished, lustreless picture, especially 
if it be a landscape. There were two or three land- 
scapes of Claude in this palace, which I doubt not 
would have been exquisite if they were in the condi- 
tion of those in the British National Gallery ; but here 
they looked most forlorn, and even their sunshine was 
sunless. The merits of historical painting may be 
quite independent of the attributes that give pleasure, 
and a superficial ugliness may even heighten the 
effect; but not so of landscapes. 

Via Porta, Palazzo Larazani, March 11 ^A. — To- 
day we called at Mr. Thompson's studio, and .... 



1858.] ITALY. 127 

he had on the easel a httle picture of St. Peter re- 
leased from prison by the angel, which I saw once 
before. It is very beautiful indeed, and deeply and 
spiritually conceived, and I wish I could afford to 
have it finished for myself. I looked again, too, at 
his Georgian slave, and admired it as much as at first 
view ; so very warm and rich it is, so sensuously 
beautiful, and with an expression of higher life and 
feeling within. I do not think there is a better painter 
than Mr. Thompson living, — among Americans at 
least ; not one so earnest, faithful, and religious in 
his worship of art. I had rather look at his pictures 
than at any except the very finest of the old masters, 
and, taking into consideration only the comparative 
pleasure to be derived, I would not except more 
than one or two of those. In painting, as in liter- 
ature, I suspect there is something in the productions 
of the day that takes the fancy more than the works of 
any past age, — not gi'eater merit, nor nearly so great, 

but better suited to this very present time 

After leaving him, we went to the Piazza di Ter- 
mini, near the Baths of Diocletian, and found our 
way with some difficulty to Crawford's studio. It 
occupies several great rooms, connected with the 
offices of the Villa Negroni ; and all these rooms were 
full of plaster casts and a few works in marble, — 
principally portions of his huge Washington monu- 
ment, which he left unfinished at his death. Close by 
the door at which we entered stood a gigantic figure of 
Mason, in bag-wig, and the coat, waistcoat, breeches, 
and knee and shoe buckles of the last century, — the 



128 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

enlargement of these unheroic matters to far more 
than heroic size having a very odd effect. There was 
a figure of Jefferson on the same scale ; another of 
Patrick Henry, besides a horse's head, and other por- 
tions of the equestrian group which is to cover the 
summit of the monument. In one of the rooms was 
a model of the monument itself, on a scale, I should 
think, of about an inch to a foot. It did not impress 
me as having grown out of any great and genuine 
idea in the artist's mind, but as being merely an 
ingenious contrivance enough. There were also casts 
of statues that seemed to be intended for some other 
monument referring to Revolutionary times and per- 
sonages ; and with these were intermixed some ideal 
statues or groups, — a naked boy playing marbles, very 
beautiful ; a girl with flowers ; the cast of his Or- 
pheus, of which I long ago saw the marble statue ; 
Adam and Eve ; Flora, — all with a good deal of merit, 
no doubt, but not a single one that justifies Craw- 
ford's reputation, or that satisfies me of his genius. 
They are but commonplaces in marble and plaster, 
such as we should not tolerate on a printed page. 
He seems to have been a respectable man, highly 
respectable, but no more, although those who knew 
him seem to have rated him much higher. It is said 
that he exclaimed, not very long before his death, 
that he had fifteen years of good work still in him ; 
and he appears to have considered all his life and 
labor, heretofore, as only preparatory to the great 
things that he was to achieve hereafter. I should 
say, on the contrary, that he was a man who had 



1858.] ITALY. 129 

done his best, and had done it early ; for his Orpheus 
is quite as good as anything else we saw in his 
studio. 

People were at. work chiselling several statues in 
marble from the plaster models, — a very interesting 
process, and what I should think a doubtful and 
hazardous one ; but the artists say that there is no 
risk of mischief, and that the model is sure to be 
accurately repeated in the marble. These persons, 
who do what is considered the mechanical part of 
the business, are often themselves sculptors, and of 
higher reputation than those who employ them. 

It is rather sad to think that Crawford died before 
he could see his ideas in the marble, where they 
gleam with so pure and celestial a light as compared 
with the plaster. There is almost as much difference 
as between flesh and spirit. 

The floor of one of the rooms was burdened with 
immense packages, containing parts of the Washing- 
ton monument, ready to be forwarded to its destina- 
tion. When finished, and set up, it will probably 
make a very splendid appearance, by. its height, its 
mass, its skilful execution ; and will produce a moral 
effect through its images of illustrious men, and the 
associations that connect it with our Revolutionary 
history ; but I do not think it will owe much to 
artistic force of thought or depth of feeling. It is cer- 
tainly, in one sense, a very foolish and illogical piece 
of work, — Washington, mounted on an uneasy steed, 
on a very narrow space, aloft in the air, whence a sin- 
gle step of the horse backward, forward, or on either 



130 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

side, must precipitate him ; and several of his con- 
temporaries standing beneath him, not looking np to 
wonder at his predicament, but each intent on mani- 
festing his own personality to the world around. 
They have nothing to do with one another, nor with 
AVashington, nor with any great purpose which ail 
are to Avork out together. 

March lith. — On Friday evening I dined at Mr. 
T. B. Reade's, the poet and artist, with a party com- 
posed of painters and sculptors, — the only exceptions 
being: the American banker and an American tourist 
who has given Mr. Reade a commission. Next to 
me at table sat Mr. Gibson, the English sculptor, 
who, I suppose, stands foremost in his profession at 
this day. He must be quite an old man now, for it 
w^as whispered about the table that he is known to 
have been in Rome forty-two years ago, and he him- 
self spoke to me of spending thirty-seven years here, 
before he once returned home. I should hardly take 
him to be sixty, however, his hair being more dark 
than gray, his forehead unwrinkled, his features un- 
withered, his eye undimmed, though his beard is 
somewhat venerable 

He has a quiet, self-contained aspect, and, being a 
bachelor, has doubtless spent a calm life among his 
clay and marble, meddling little with the world, and 
'entangling himself with no cares beyond his studio. 
He did not talk a great deal ; but enough to show 
that he is still an Englishman in many sturdy traits, 
though his accent has something foreign about it. His 
conversation was chiefly about India, and other topics 



1858.] ITALY. 131 

of the day, together with a few reminiscences of people 
in Liverpool/ where he once resided. There was a 
kind of simplicity both in his manner and matter, and 
nothing very remarkable in the latter 

The gist of what he said (upon art) was condemna- 
tory of the Pre-Raphaelite modern school of painters, 
of whom he seemed to spare none, and of their works 
nothing ; though he allowed that the old Pre-Raphael- 
ites had some exquisite merits, which the moderns 
entirely omit in their imitations. In his own art, 
he said the aim should be to find out the principles 
on which the Greek sculptors wrought, and to do the 
work of this day on those principles and in their 
spirit ; a fair doctrine enough, I should think, but 
which Mr. Gibson can scarcely be said to practise. 
.... The difference between the Pre-Raphaelites and 
himself is deep and genuine, they being literalists 
and realists, in a certain sense, and he a pagan 
idealist. Methinks they have hold of the best end 
5of the matter. 

March l^th. — To-day, it being very bright and 
•mild, we set out, at. noon, for an expedition to the 
Temple of Yesta, though I did not feel much inclined 
for walking, having been ill and feverish for two or 
three days past with a cold, which keeps renewing 
itself faster than I can get rid of it. We kept along 
on this side of the Corso, and crossed the Forum, 
•skirting along the Capitoline Hill, and thence towards 
the Circus Maximus. On our way, looking down a 
cross street, w^e saw a heavy arch, and, on examina- 
tion, made it out to be the Arch of Janus Quadrifrons, 



132 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [I808. 

standing in the Forum Boarium. Its base is now 
considerably below the level of the surrounding soil, 
and there is a church or basilica close by, and some 
mean edifices looking down upon it. There is some- 
thing satisfactory in thiL arch, from the immense 
solidity of its structure. It gives the idea, in the 
first place, of a solid mass constructed of huge blocks 
of marble, which time can never wear away, nor 
earthquakes shake down; and then this solid mass 
is penetrated by two arched passages, meeting in the 
centre. There are empty niches, three in a row, and, 
I think, two rows on each face ; but there seems to 
have been very little efibrt to make it a beautiful 
object. On the top is some brickwork, the remains 
of a mediaeval fortress built by the Frangipanis, look- 
ing very frail and temporary being brought thus in 
contact with the antique strength of the arch. 

A few yards ofi; across the street, and close beside 
the basilica, is what appears to be an ancient portal, 
with carved bas-reliefs, and an inscription which I 
could not make out. Some Romans were lying dor- 
mant in the sun, on the steps of the basilica ; indeed, 
now that the sun is getting warmer, they seem to take 
advantage of every quiet nook to bask in, and perhaps 
to go to sleep. 

We had gone but a little way from the arch, and 
across the Circus Maximus, when we saw the Temple 
of Vesta before us, on the bank of the Tiber, which, 
however, we could not see behind it. It is a most 
perfectly preserved Roman ruin, and very beautiful, 
though so small that, in a suitable locality, one would 



1858.] ITALY. 133 

take it rather for a garden-house than an ancient 
temple. A circle of white marble pillars, much time- 
worn and a little battered, though but one of them 
broken, surround the solid structure of the temple, 
leaving a circular walk between it and the pillars, the 
whole covered by a modern roof which looks like 
wood, and disgraces and deforms the elegant little 
building. This roof resembles, as much as anything 
else, the round wicker cover of a basket, and gives a 
very squat aspect to the temple. The pillars are of 
the Corinthian order, and when they were new and the 
marble snow-white and sharply carved and cut, there 
could' not have been a prettier object in all Rome ; 
but so small an edifice does not appear well as a ruin. 

Within view of it, and, indeed, a very little way off, 
is the Temple of Fortuna Virilis, which, likewise re- 
tains its antique form in better preservation than we 
generally find a Roman ruin, although the Ionic pillars 
are now built up with blocks of stone and patches of 
brickwork, the whole constituting a church which is 
fixed against the side of a tall edifice, the nature of 
which I do not know. 

I forgot to say that we gained admittance into the 
Temple of Vesta, and found the interior a plain 
cylinder of marble, about ten paces across, and fitted 
up as a chapel, where the Virgin takes the place of 
Vesta. 

In very close vicinity we came upon the Ponte 
Rotto, the old Pons Emilius which was broken dovv-n 
long ago, and has recently been pieced out by con- 
necting a suspension bridge with the old piers. We 



134 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l85a 

crossed by this bridge, paying a toll of a baioccho 
each, and stopped in the midst of the river to look 
at the Temple of Vesta, which shows well, right on 
the brink of the Tiber. We fancied, too, that we 
could discern, a little farther down the river, the 
ruined and almost submerged piers of the Sublician 
bridge, which Horatius Codes defended. The Tiber 
here whirls rapidly along, and Horatius must have 
had a perilous swim for his life, and the enemy a fair 
mark at his head with their arrows. I think this is 
the most picturesque part of the Tiber in its passage 
through Rome. 

After crossing the bridge, we kept along the right 
bank of the river, through the dirty and hard-hearted 
streets of Trastevere (which have in no respect the 
advantage oyer those of hither Rome), till we reached 
St. Peter's. We saw a family sitting before then: 
door on the pavement in the narrow and sunny street, 
engaged in their domestic avocations, — the old woman 
spinning with a wheel. I suppose the people now 
begin to live out of doors. We entered beneath the 
colonnade of St. Peter's, and immediately became 
sensible of an evil odor, — the bad odor of our fallen 
nature, which there is no escaping in any nook of 
Rome 

Between the pillars of the colonnade, however, we 
had the pleasant spectacle of the two fountains, send- 
ing up their lily-shaped gush, with rainbows shining 
in their falling spray. Parties of French soldiers, as 
usual, were undergoing their drill in the piazza. 
AVhen we entered the church, the long, dusty sun- 



1858.] ITALY. 135 

beams were falling aslautwise through the dome and 
through the chancel behind it 

March 23d. — On the 21st we all went to the 
Coliseum, and enjoyed ourselves there in the bright, 
warm sun, — so bright and warm that we were glad to 
get into the shadow of the walls and under the arches, 
though, after all, there was the freshness of March in 

the breeze that stirred now and then. J and baby 

found some beautiful flowers growing round about the 
Coliseum ; and far up towards the top of the walls we 
saw tufts of yellow wall-flowers and a great deal of 
green grass growing along the ridges between the 
arches. The general aspect of the place, however, is 
somewhat bare, and does not compare favorably with 
an English ruin both on account of the lack of ivy and 
because the material is chiefly brick, the stone and 
marble having been stolen away by popes and . cardi- 
nals to build their palaces. While we sat within the 
circle, many people, of both sexes, passed through, 
kissing the iron cross which stands in the centre, there- 
by gaining an indulgence of seven years, I believe. In 
front of se\ eral churches I have seen an inscription in 
Latin, " Indulgentia plenaria et perpetua pro cunc- 
Tis MORTUis ET vivis " ; than which, it seems to me, 
nothing more could be asked or desired. The terms 
of this great boon are not mentioned. 

Leaving the Coliseum, we went and sat down in the 

vicinity of the Arch of Constantine, and J and 

R went in quest of lizards. J soon caught a 

large one with two tails; one, a sort of afterthought, 
or appendix, or corollary to the original tail, and 



136 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

growing out from it instead of from the body of the 

lizard. These reptiles are very abundant, and J 

has already brought home several, which make their 
escape and appear occasionally darting to and fro on 

the carpet. Since we have been here, J has taken 

up various pursuits in turn. First he voted himself 
to gathering snail-shells, of which there are many 
sorts; afterwards he had a fever for marbles, pieces 
of which he found on the banks of the Tiber, just on 
the edge of its muddy waters, and in the Palace of the 
Csesars, the Baths of Caracalla, and indeed wherever 
else his fancy led him ; verde antique, rosso antico, 
porphyry, giallo antico, serpentine, sometimes frag- 
ments of bas-reliefs and mouldings, bits of mosaic, still 
firmly stuck together, on which the foot of a Caesar 
had perhaps once trodden ; pieces of Roman glass, 
with the iridescence glowing on them ; and all such 
things, of which the soil of Rome is full. It would 
not be difficult, from the spoil of his boyish rambles, 
to furnish what would be looked upon as a curious 
and valuable museum in America. 

Yesterday we went to the sculpture-galleries of the 
Vatican. I think I enjoy these noble galleries and 
their contents and beautiful arrangement better than 
anything else in the way of art, and often I seem to 
have a deep feeling of something wonderful in what I 
look at. The Laocoon on this visit impressed me not 
less than before ; it is such a type of human beings, 
struggling with an inextricable trouble, and entangled 
in a complication which they cannot free themselves 
from by their own efforts, and out of which Heaven 



1858.] ITALY. 137 

alone cau help them. It was a most powerful mind, 
and one capable of reducing a complex idea to unity, 
that imagined this group. I looked at Canova's Per- 
seus, and thought it exceedingly beautiful, but found 
myself less and less contented after a moment or two, 
though I could not tell why. Afterwards, looking at 
the Apollo, the recollection of the Perseus disgusted 
me, and yet really I cannot explain how one is better 
than the other. 

I was interested in looking at the busts of the 
Triumvirs, Antony, Augustus, and Lepidus. The first 
two are men of intellect, evidently, though they do 
not recommend themselves to one's affections by their 
physiognomy ; but Lepidus has the strangest, most 
commonplace countenance that can be imagined, — 
small-featured, weak, such a face as you meet any- 
where in a man of no mark, but are amazed to find in 
one of the three foremost men of the world. I sup- 
pose that it is these weak and shallow men, when 
chance raises them above their proper sphere, who 
commit enormous crimes without any such restraint 
as stronger men would feel, and without any retribu- 
tion in the depth of their conscience. These old 
Roman busts, of which there are so many in the 
Vatican, have often a most life-like aspect, a striking 
individuality. One recognizes them as faithful por- 
traits, just as certainly as if the living originals were 
standing beside them. The arrangement of the hair 
and beard too, in many cases, is just what we see now% 
the fashions of two thousand years ago having come 
round again. 



138 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

March 2^th. — On Tuesday we went to breakfast at 
William Story's in the Palazzo Barberini. We had a 
very pleasant time. He is one of the most agreeable 
men I know in society. He showed us a note from 
Thackeray, an invitation to dinner, written in hiero- 
glyphics, with great fun and pictorial merit. He spoke 
of an expansion of the story of Blue Beard, which he 
himself had either written or thought of writing, in 
which the contents of the several chambers which 
Fatima opened, before arriving at the fatal one, were 
to be described. This idea has haunted my mind 
ever since, and if it had but been my own I am pretty 
sure that it would develop itself into something very 
rich. I mean to press William Story to work it out. 
The chamber of Blue Beard, too (and this was a part 
of his suggestion), might be so handled as to become 
powerfully interesting. Were I to take up the story 
I would create an interest by suggesting a secret in 
the first chamber, which would develop itself more 
and more in every successive hall of the great palace, 
and lead the wife irresistibly to the chamber of horrors. 

After breakfast, we went to the Barberini Library, 
passing through the vast hall, which occupies the cen- 
tral part of the palace. It is the most splendid do- 
mestic hall I have seen, eighty feet in length at least, 
and of proportionate breadth and height ; and the 
vaulted ceiling is entirely covered, to its utmost edge 
and remotest corners, with a brilliant painting in 
fresco, looking like a whole heaven of angelic people 
descending towards the floor. The effect is indescrib- 
ably gorgeous. On one side stands a Baldacchino, or 



1858] ITALY. 139 

canopy of state, draped with scarlet cloth, and fringed 
■with gold embroidery ; the scarlet indicating that the 
palace is inhabited by a cardinal. Green would be 
appropriate to a prince. In point of fact, the Palazzo 
Barberini is inhabited by a cardinal, a prince, and a 
duke, all belonging to the Barberini family, and each 
having his separate portion of the palace, while their 
servants have a common territory and meeting-ground 
in this noble hall. 

After admiring it for a few minutes, we made our 
exit by a door on the opposite side, and went up the 
spiral staircase of marble to the library, where we 
were received by an ecclesiastic, who belongs to the 
Barberini household, and I believe was born in it. 
He is a gentle, refined, quiet-looking man, as well he 
may be, having spent all his life among these books, 
where few people intrude, and few cares can come. 
He showed us a very old Bible in parchment, a speci- 
men of the earliest printing, beautifully ornamented 
with pictures, and some monkish illuminations of 
indescribable delicacy and elaboration. No artist 
could afford to produce such work, if the life that he 
thus lavished on one sheet of parchment had any 
value to him, either for what could be done or enjoyed 
in it. There are about eight thousand volumes in this 
library, and, judging by their outward aspect, the col- 
lection must be curious and valuable ; but having 
another engagement, we could spend only a little time 
here. We had a hasty glance, however, of some poems 
of Tasso, in his own autograph. 

We then went to the Palazzo Galitzin, where dwell 



140 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

the Misses Weston, with whom we lunched, and where 
we met a French abbe, an agreeable man, and an an- 
tiquarian, under whose auspices two of the ladies and 
ourselves took carriage for the Castle of St. Angelo. 
Being admitted within the external gateway, we 
found ourselves in the court of guard, as I presume it 
is called, where the French soldiers were playing with 
very dirty cards, or lounging about, in military idle- 
ness. They were well behaved and courteous, and 
when we had intimated our wish to see the interior 
of the castle, a soldier soon appeared, with a large 
unlighted torch in his hand, ready to guide us. There 
is an outer wall, surrounding the solid structure of 
Hadrian's tomb ; to which there is access by one or 
two drawbridges ; the entrance to the tomb, or castle, 
not being at the base, but near its central height. 
The ancient entrance, by which Hadrian's ashes, and 
those of other imperial personages, were probably 
brought into this tomb, has been walled up, — perhaps 
ever since the last emperor was buried here. We 
were now in a vaulted passage, both lofty and broad, 
which circles round the whole interior of the tomb, 
from the base to the summit. During many hundred 
years, the passage was filled with earth and rubbish, 
and forgotten, and it is but partly excavated, even 
now ; although we found it a long, long, and gloomy 
descent by torchlight to the base of the vast mauso- 
leum. The passage was once lined and vaulted with 
precious marbles (which are now entirely gone), and 
paved with fine mosaics, portions of which still remain : 
and our guide lowered his flaming torch to show them 



1858.] ITALY. 141 

to us, here and there, amid the earthy dampness over 
which we trod. It is strange to think what splendor 
and costly adornment were here wasted on the dead. 

After we had descended to the bottom of this pas- 
sage, and again retraced our steps to the highest part, 
the guide took a large cannon-ball, and sent it, with 
his whole force, rolhng down the hollow, arched way, 
rumbling, and reverberating, and bellowing forth long 
thunderous echoes, and winding up with a loud, dis- 
tant crash, that seemed to come from the very bowels 
of the earth. 

We saw the place, near the centre of the mauso- 
leum, and lighted from above, through an immense 
thickness of stone and brick, where the ashes of the 
emperor and his fellow-slumberers were found. It is 
as much as twelve centuries, very likely, since they 
were scattered to the winds, for the tomb has beei? 
nearly or quite that space of time a fortress. The 
tomb itself is merely the base and foundation of the 
castle, and, being so massively built, it serves just a& 
well for the purpose as if it were a solid granite rock. 
The mediaeval fortress, with its antiquity of more than 
a thousand years, and having dark and deep dungeons 
of its own, is but a modern excrescence on the top of 
Hadrian's tomb. 

We now ascended towards the upper region, and 
were led into the vaults which used to serve as a pris- 
on, but which, if I mistake not, are situated above 
the ancient structure, although they seem as damp 
and subterranean as if they were fifty feet under the 
earth. We crept down to them through narrow and 



142 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

ugly passages, which the torchlight would not illumi- 
nate, and, stooping under a low, square entrance, we 
followed the guide into a small, vaulted room, — not a 
room, but an artificial cavern, remote from light or 
air, where Beatrice Cenci was confined before her exe- 
cution. According to the abbe, she spent a whole 
year in this dreadful pit, her trial having dragged on 
through that length of time. How ghost-like she 
must have looked when she came forth ! Guido never 
painted that beautiful picture from her blanched face, 
as it appeared after this confinement. And how re- 
joiced she must have been to die at last, having al- 
ready been in a sepulchre so long ! 

Adjacent to Beatrice's prison, but not communicat- 
ing with it, was that of her step-mother ; and next to 
the latter was one that interested me almost as much 
as Beatrice's, — that of Benvenuto Cellini, who was 
confined here, I believe, for an assassination. All 
these prison vaults are more horrible than can be im- 
agined without seeing them ; but there are worse 
places here, for the guide lifted a trap-door in one of 
the passages, and held his torch down into an inscru- 
table pit beneath our feet. It was an oubliette, a dun- 
geon where the prisoner might be buried alive, and 
never come forth again, alive or dead. Groping about 
among these sad precincts, we saw various other 
things that looked very dismal ; but at last emerged 
into the sunshine, and ascended from one platform 
and battlement to another, till we found ourselves 
right at the feet of the Archangel Michael. He has 
stood there in bronze for I know not how manj^ hun- 



1858.] ITALY. 143 

dred years, in the act of sheathing a (now) rusty 
sword, such being the attitude in which he appeared 
to one of the popes in a vision, in token that a pes- 
tilence which was then desolating Rome was to be 
stayed. 

There is a fine view from the lofty station over 
Rome and the whole adjacent country, and the abbe 
pointed out the site of Ardea, of Corioli, of Yeii, and 
other places renowned in story. We were ushered, 
too, into the French commandant's quarters in the 
castle. There is a large hall, ornamented with fres- 
cos, and accessible from this a drawing-room, com- 
fortably fitted up, and where we saw modern furni- 
ture, and a chess-board, and a fire burning clear, and 
other symptoms that the place had perhaps just been 
vacated by civilized and kindly people. But in one 
corner of the ceiling the abbe pointed out a ring, by 
which, in the times of mediaeval anarchy, when popes, 
cardinals, and barons were all by the ears together, a 
cardinal was hanged. It was not an assassination, 
but a legal punishment, and he was 'executed in the 
best apartment of the castle as an act of grace. 

The fortress is a straight-lined structure on the 
summit of the immense round tower of Hadrian's 
tomb ; and to make out the idea of it we must throw 
in drawbridges, esplanades, piles of ancient marble 
balls for cannon ; battlements and embrasures, lying 
high in the breeze and sunshine, and opening views 
round the whole horizon ; accommodation for the sol- 
diers ; and many small beds in a large room. 

How much mistaken was the emperor in his expec- 



144 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

tation of a stately, solemn repose for his ashes through 
all the coming centuries, as long as the world should 
endure ! Perhaps his ghost glides up and down dis- 
consolate, in that spiral passage which goes from top 
to bottom of the tomb, while the barbarous Gauls 
plant themselves in his very mausoleum to keep the 
imperial city in awe. 

Leaving the Castle 'of St. Angelo, we drove, still on 
the same side of the Tiber, to the Villa Pomfila, 
which lies a short distance beyond the walls. As we 
passed through one of the gates (I think it was that 
of San Pancrazio) the abb^ pointed out the spot 
where the Constable de Bourbon was killed while 
attempting to scale the walls. If we are to believe 
Benvenuto Cellini, it was he who shot the constable. 
The road to the villa is not very interesting, lying (as 
the roads in the vicinity of Rome often do) between 
very high walls, admitting not a glimpse of the 
siuTounding country ; the road itself white and dusty, 
with no verdant margin of grass or border of 
shrubbery. At the portal of the villa we found many 
carriages in waiting, for the Prince Doria throws 
open the grounds to all comers, and on a pleasant 
day like this they are probably sure to be thronged. 
We left our carriage just within the entrance, and 
rambled among these beautiful gi-oves, admiring the 
live-oak trees, and the stone pines, which latter are 
truly a majestic tree, with tall columnar stems, 
supporting a cloud-like density of boughs far aloft, 
and not a straggling branch between them and the 
ground. They stand in straight rows, but are now 



1858.] ITALY. 145 

SO ancient and venerable as to have lost the formal 
look of a plantation, and seem like a wood that 
might have arranged itself almost of its own will. 
Beneath them is a flower-strewn turf, quite free of 
underbrush. We found open fields and lawns, more- 
over, all abloom with anemones, white and rose- 
colored and purple and golden, and far larger than 
could be found out of Italy, except in hothouses. 
Violets, too, were abundant and exceedingly fragrant. 
When we consider that all this floral exuberance 
occurs in the midst of March, there does not appear 
much ground for complaining of the Roman climate ; 
and so long ago as the first week of February I fomid 
daisies among the grass, on the sunny side of the 
Basilica of St. John Lateran. At this very moment I 
suppose the country within twenty miles of Boston 
may be two feet deep with snow, and the streams 
solid with ice. 

We wandered about the grounds, and found them 
very beautiful indeed ; nature having done much for 
them by an undulating variety of surface, and art 
having added a good many charms, which have all 
the better effect now that decay and neglect have 
thrown a natural grace over them likewise. There is 
an artificial ruin, so picturesque that it betrays itself; 
weather-beaten statues, and pieces of sculpture, 
scattered here and there ; an artificial lake, with 
upgushing fountains ; cascades, and broad-bosomed 
coves, and long, canal-like reaches, with swans 
taking their delight upon them. I never saw such 
a glorious and resplendent lustre of white as shone 



146 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

between the wings of two of these swans. It was 
really a sight to see, and not to be imagined before- 
hand. Angels, no doubt, have just such lustrous 
wings as those. English swans partake of the dingi- 
ness of the atmosphere, and their plumage has noth- 
ing at all to be compared to this ; in fact, there is 
nothing like it in the world, unless it be the illumi- 
nated portion of a fleecy, summer cloud. 

While we were sauntering along beside this piece 

of water, we were surprised to see U on the 

other side. She had come hither with E S 

and her two little brothers, and with our H , the 

whole under the charge of Mrs. Story's nursery-maids. 

U and E crossed, not over, but beneath the 

water, through a grotto, and exchanged greetings 
with us. Then, as it was getting towards sunset and 
cool, we took our departure ; the abbe, as we left the 
grounds, taking me aside to give me a glimpse of a 
Columbarium, which descends into the earth to about 
the depth to which an ordinary house might rise 
above it. These grounds, it is said, formed the coun- 
try residence of the Emperor Galba, and he was 
buried here after his assassination. It is a sad thought 
that so much natural beauty and long refinement of 
picturesque culture is thrown away, the villa being 
uninhabitable during all the most delightful season 
of the year on account of malaria. There is truly a 
curse on Rome and all its neighborhood. 

On our way home we passed by the great Paolina 
fountain, and were assailed by many beggars during 
the short time we stopped to look at it. It is a very 



1858.] ITALY. 147 

copious fountain, but not so beautiful as the Trevi, 
taking into view merely the water-gush of the latter. 

March 2Qth. — Yesterday, between twelve and one, 
our whole family went to the Villa Ludovisi, the 
entrance to which is at the termination of a street 
which passes out of the Piazza Barberini, and it is no 
very great distance from our own street. Via Porta 
Pinciana. The gTounds, though very extensive, are 
wholly within the walls of the city, which skirt them, 
and comprise a part of what were formerly the gar- 
dens of Sallust. The villa is now the property of 
Prince Piombini, a ticket from whom procured us 
admission. A little within the gateway, to the right, 
is a casino, containing two large rooms filled with 
sculpture, much of which is very valuable. A colossal 
head of Juno, I believe, is considered the greatest 
treasure of the collection, but I did not myself feel it 
to be so, nor indeed did I receive any strong impres- 
sion of its excellence. I admired nothing so much, I 
think, as the face of Penelope (if it be her face) in the 
group supposed also to represent Electra and Orestes. 
The sitting statue of Mars is very fine ; so is the Aria 
and Psetus ; so are many other busts and figures. 

By and by we left the casino and wandered among 
the grounds, threading interminable alleys of cypress, 
through the long vistas of which we could see here 
and there a statue, an urn, a pillar, a temple, or 
garden-house, or a bas-relief against the wall. It 
seems as if there must have been a time, — and not so 
verv long ago, — when it was worth while to spend 
money and thought upon the oraamentation of 



148 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

grounds in the neighborhood of Rome. That time 
is past, however, and the result is very melancholy; 
for great beauty has been produced, but it can be en- 
joyed in its perfection only at the peril of one's 

life For my part, and judging from my ov/n 

experience, I suspect that the Roman atmosphere, 
never wholesome, is always more or less poisonous. 

We came to another and larger casino remote from 
the gateway, in which the Prince resides during two 
months of the year. It was now under repair, but we 
gained admission, as did several other visitors, and 
saw in the entrance-hall the Aurora of Guercino, 
painted in fresco on the ceiling. There is beauty in 
the design ; but the painter certainly was most un- 
happy in his black shadows, and in the w^ork before 
us they give the impression of a cloudy and lowering 
morning which is likely enough to turn to rain by 
and by. After viewing the fresco we mounted by a 
spiral staircase to a lofty terrace, and found Rome at 
our feet, and, far off, the Sabine and Alban moun- 
tains, some of them still capped with snow. In 
^.nother direction there was a vast plain, on the 
horizon of which, could our eyes have reached to its 
verge, we might perhaps have seen the Mediterranean 
Sea. After enjoying the view and the warm sunshine 
we descended, and went in quest of the gardens of 
Sallust, but found no satisfactory remains of them. 

One of the most striking objects in the first casino 
was a group by Bernini, — Pluto, an outrageously 
masculine and strenuous figure, heavily bearded, 
ravishing away a little, tender Proserpine, whom he 



1858.] ITALY. 149 

holds aloft, while his forcible gripe impresses itself 
into her soft virgin flesh. It is verj disagreeable, 
but it makes one feel that Bernini was a man of great 
ability. There are some works in literature that bear 
an analogy to his works in sculpture, when gTeat 
power is lavished a little outside of nature, and there- 
fore proves to be only a fashion, and not permanently 
adapted to the tastes of mankind. 

March 21th, — Yesterday forenoon my wife and I 
went to St. Peter's to see the pope pray at the chapel 
of the Holy Sacrament. We found a good many 
people in the church, but not an inconvenient num- 
ber ; indeed, not so many as to make any remarkable 
show in the great nave, nor even in front of the 
chapel. A detachment of the Swiss Guard, in their 
strange, picturesque, harlequin-like costume, were on 
duty before the chapel, in which the wax tapers were 
all lighted, and a prie-dieic was arranged near the 
shrine, and covered with scarlet velvet. On each 
side, along the breadth of the side-aisle, were placed 
seats, covered with rich tapestry or carpeting ; and 
some gentlemen and ladies — English, probably, or 
American — had comfortably deposited themselves 
here, but were compelled to move by the guards 
before the pope's entrance. His holiness should have 
appeared precisely at twelve, but we waited nearly 
half an hour beyond that time ; and it seemed to me 
particularly ill-mannered in the pope, who owes the 
courtesy of being punctual to the people, if not to 
St. Peter. By and by, however, there was a stir ; the 
guard motioned to us to stand away from the benches, 



150 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

against the backs of which we had been leaning ; the 
spectators in the nave looked towards the door, as if 
they beheld something approaching; and first, there 
appeared some cardinals, in scarlet skull-caps and 
purple robes, intermixed with some of the Noble 
Guard and other attendants. It was not a very formal 
and stately procession, but rather straggled onward, 
with ragged edges, the spectators standing aside to 
let it pass, and merely bowing, or perhaps slightly 
bending the knee, as good Catholics are accustomed 
to do when passing before the shrines of saints. 
Then, in the midst of the purple cardinals, all of 
whom were gray-haired men, appeared a stout old 
man, with a white skull-cap, a scarlet, gold-em- 
broidered cape falling over his shoulders, and a white 
silk robe, the train of w^hich w\as borne up by an 
attendant. He walked slowly, with a sort of dignified 
movement, stepping out broadly, and planting his 
feet (on which were red shoes) flat upon the pave- 
ment, as if he were not much accustomed to locomo- 
tion, and perhaps had known a twinge of the gout. 
His face was kindly and venerable, but not particu' 
larly impressive. Arriving at the scarlet-covered 
prie-dieu, he kneeled down and took off his white 
skull-cap ; the cardinals also kneeled behind and on 
either side of him, taking off their scarlet skull-caps ; 
while the Noble Guard remained standing, six on one 
side of his holiness and six on the other. The pope 
bent his head upon the prie-dieu^ and seemed to spend 
three or four minutes in prayer; then rose, and all 
the purple cardinals, and bishops, and priests, of 



1858.] ITALY. 151 

whatever degree, rose behind and beside him. Next, 
he went to kiss St. Peter's toe ; at least I believe he 
kissed it, but I was not near enough to -be certain ; 
and lastly, he knelt down, and directed his devotions 
towards the high altar. This completed the ceremo- 
nies, and his holiness left the church by a side door, 
making a short passage into the Vatican. 

I am very glad I have seen the pope, because now 
he may be crossed out of the list of sights to be seen. 
His proximity impressed me kindly and favorably 
towards him, and I did not see one face among all 
his cardinals (in whose number, doubtless, is his suc- 
cessor) which I would so soon trust as that of Pio 
Nono. 

This morning I walked as far as the gate of San 
Paolo, and, on approaching it, I saw the gray sharp 
pyramid of Caius Cestius pointing upward close to 
the two dark-brown, battlemented Gothic towers of 
the gateway, each of these very different pieces of 
architecture looking the more picturesque for the 
contrast of the other. Before approaching the gate- 
way and pyramid, I walked onward, and soon came 
in sight of Monte Testaccio, the artificial hill mad^ 
of potsherds. There is a gate admitting into the 
grounds around the hill, and a road encircling its 
base. At a distance, the hill looks greener than any 
other part of the landscape, and has all the curved 
outlines of a natural hill, resembling in shape a head- 
less sphinx, or Laddeback Mountain, as I used to 
see it from Lenox. It is of very considerable height, 
— two or three hundred feet at least, I should say, — 



152 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

and well entitled, both bj its elevation and the space 
it covers, to be reckoned among the hills of Rome. 
Its base is almost entirely surrounded with small 
structures, which seem to be used as farm-buildings. 
On the summit is a large iron cross, the Church hav- 
ing thought it expedient to redeem these shattered 
pipkins from the power of paganism, as it has so 
many other Roman ruins. There was a pathway up 
the hill, but I did not choose to ascend it under the 
hot sun, so steeply did it clamber up. There appears 
to be a good depth of soil on most parts of Monte 
Testaccio, but on some of the sides you observe 
precipices, bristling with fragments of red or brown 
earthenware, or pieces of vases of white unglazed 
clay ; and it is evident that this immense pile is 
entirely composed of broken crockery, which I should 
hardly have thought would have aggregated to such 
a heap had it all been thrown here, — urns, teacups, 
porcelain, or earthen, — since the beginning of the 
world. 

I walked quite round the hill, and saw, at no great 
distance from it, the enclosure of the Protestant 
burial-ground, which lies so close to the pyramid of 
Caius Cestius that the latter may serve as a general 
monument to the dead. Deferring, for the present, 
a visit to the cemetery, or to the interior of the pyra- 
mid, I returned to the gateway of San Paolo, and, 
passing through it, took a view of it from the outside 
of the city wall. It is itself a portion of the wall, 
having been built into it by the Emperor Aurelian, 
so that about half of it lies within and half without. 



J858.] ITALY. 153 

The brick or red stone material of the wall being so 
unlike the marble of the pyramid, the latter is as 
distinct, and seems as insulated, as if it stood alone 
in the centre of a plain ; and really I do not think 
there is a more striking architectural object in Rome. 
It is in perfect condition, just as little ruined or de- 
cayed as on the day when the builder put the last 
peak on the summit ; and it ascends steeply from 
its base, with a point so sharp that it looks as if it 
would hardly afford foothold to a bird. The marble 
was once white, but is now covered with a gray coat- 
ing like that which has gathered upon the statues of 
Castor and Pollux on Monte Cavallo. Not one of the 
great blocks is displaced, nor seems likely to be 
through all time to come. They rest one upon an- 
other, in straight and even lines, and present a vast 
smooth triangle, ascending from a base of a hundred 
feet, and narrowing to an apex at the height of a hun- 
dred and twenty-five, the junctures of the marble 
slabs being so close that, in all these twenty centuries, 
only a few little tufts of grass, and a trailing plant 
or two, have succeeded in rooting themselves into 
the interstices. 

It is good and satisfactory to see anything which, 
6eing built for an enduring monument, has endured 
so faithfully, and has a prospect of such an inter- 
minable futurity before it. Once, indeed, it seemed 
likely to be buried ; for three hundred years ago it 
had become covered to the depth of sixteen feet, but 
the soil has since been dug away from its base, which 
is now lower than that of the road which passes 
7* 



154 " FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

through the neighboring gate of San Paolo. Midway 
up the pyramid, cut in the marble, is an inscription 
in large Iloman letters, still almost as legible as when 
first wrought. 

I did not return through the Paolo gateway, but 
kept onward, round the exterior of the wall, till I 
came to the gate of San Sebastiano. It was a hot and 
not a very interesting walk, with only a high bare 
wall of brick, broken by frequent square towers, on 
one side of the road, and a bank and hedge or a 
garden wall on the other. Roman roads are most 
inhospitable, offering no shade, and no seat, and no 
pleasant views of rustic domiciles ; nothing but the 
Y/heel-track of white dust, without a footpath running 
by its side, and seldom any grassy margin to refresh 
the wayfarer's feet. 

April 3d. — A few days ago we visited the studio 
of Mr. — — , an American, who seems to have a good 
deal of vogue as a sculptor. We found a figure of 
Pocahontas, which he has repeated several times ; 
another, which he calls " The Wept of the Wish-ton- 
Wish," a figure of a smiling girl playing with a cat 
and dog, and a school-boy mending a pen. These two 
last were the only ones that gave me any pleasure, or 
that really had any merit ; for his cleverness and 
ingenuity appear in homely subjects, but are quite 
lost in attempts at a higher ideality. JS evertheless, 
he has a group of the Prodigal Son, possessing more 

merit than I should have expected from Mr. , the 

son reclining his head on his father's breast, with an 
expression of utter weariness, at length finding perfect 



1858.] ITALY.' 155 

rest, while the father bends his benign countenance 
over him, and seems to receive him calmly into him- 
self. This group (the plaster-cast standing beside it) 
is now taking shape out of an immense block of mar- 
ble, and will be as indestructible as the Laocoon ; an 
idea at once awful and ludicrous, when we consider 
that it is at best but a respectable production. I have 

since been told that Mr. had stolen, adopted, 

we will rather say, the attitude and idea of the 
group from one executed by a student of the French 
Academy, and to be seen there in plaster.* 

Mr. has now been ten years in Italy, and, 

after all this time, he is still entirely American in 
everything but the most external surface of his man- 
ners ; scarcely Europeanized, or much modified even 

in that. He is a native of , but had his early 

breeding in New York, and might, for any polish or 
refinement that I can discern in him, still be a country 
shopkeeper in the interior of New York State or New 
England. How strange ! For one expects to find the 
polish, the close grain and white purity of marble, in the 
artist who works in that noble material ; but, after all, 
he handles day, and, judging by the specimens 1 have 
seen here, is apt to he clay, not of the finest, himself 
Mr. is sensible, shrewd, keen, clever ; an ingeni- 
ous workman, no doubt ; with tact enough, and not 
destitute of taste ; very agreeable and lively in his 
conversation, talking as fast and as naturally as a 
brook runs, without the slightest affectation. His 
naturalness is, in fact, a rather striking characteristic, 

* We afterwards saw it in the Medici Casino. 



156 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

in view of his lack of culture, while yet his life has 
been concerned with idealities and a beautiful art. 
What degree of taste he pretends to, he seems really 
to possess, nor did I hear a single idea from him that 
struck me as otherwise than sensible. 

He called to see us last evening, and talked for 
about two hours in a very amusing and interesting 
style, his topics being taken from his own personal 
experience, and shrewdly treated. He spoke much of 
Greenough, whom he described as an excellent critic 
of art, but possessed of not the slightest inventive 
genius. His statue of Washington, at the Capitol, is 
taken precisely from the Phillian Jupiter ; his Chant- 
ing Cherubs are copied in marble from two figures in 
a picture by Raphael. He did nothing that was 

original with himself. .... To-day we took R , 

and went to see Miss , and as her studio seems 

to be mixed up with Gibson's, we had an opportunity 
of glancing at some of his beautiful works. We saw a 
Venus and a Cupid, both of them tinted ; and, side 
by side with them, other statues identical with these, 
except that the marble was left in its pure whiteness. 

We found Miss in a little upper room. She 

has a small, brisk, wide-awake figure, not ungraceful ; 
frank, simple, straightforward, and downright. She 
had on a robe, I think, but I did not look so low, my 
attention being chiefly drawn to a sort of man's sack 
of purple or plum-colored broadcloth, into the side- 
pockets of which her hands were thrust as she came 
forward to greet us. She withdrew one hand, how- 
ever, and presented it cordially to my wife (whom she 




See page 158. 



(S2. 



1858.] ITALY. 157 

already knew) and to myself, without waiting for an 
introduction. She had on a shirt-front, collar, and 
cravat like a man's, with a brooch of Etruscan gold, 
and on her curly head was a picturesque little cap of 
black velvet, and her face was as bright and merry, 
and as small of feature as a child's. It looked in one 
aspect youthful, and yet there was something worn in 
it too. There never was anything so jaunty as her 
movement and action ; she was very peculiar, but she 
seemed to be her actual self, and nothing affected or 
made up ; so that, for my part, I gave her full leave 
to wear what may suit her best, and to behave as her 
inner woman prompts. I don't quite see, however, 
what she is to do when she grows older, for the deco- 
rum of age will not be consistent with a costume that 
looks pretty and excusable enough in a young woman. 

Miss led us into a part of the extensive studio, 

or collection of studios, where some of her own w^orks 
were to be seen : Beatrice Cenci, which did not very 
greatly impress me ; and a monumental design, a 
female figure, — wholly draped even to the stockings 
and shoes, — in a quiet sleep. I liked this last. There 
was also a Puck, doubtless full of fun ; but I had 

hardly time to glance at it. Miss evidently has 

good gifts in her profession, and doubtless she derives 
great advantage from her close association with a 
consummate artist like Gibson ; nor yet does his in- 
fluence seem to interfere with the originality of her 
own conceptions. In one way, at least, she can hardly 
fail to profit, — that is, by the opportunity of showing 
her works to the throngs of people who go to see 



158 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

Gibson's own ; and these are just such people as an 
artist would most desire to meet, and might never see 
in a lifetime, if left to himself. I shook hands with 
this frank and pleasant little person, and took leave, 
not without purpose of seeing her again. 

Within a few days, there have been many pilgrims 
in Rome, who come hither to attend the ceremonies 
of holy week, and to perform their vows, and under- 
go their penances. I saw two of them near the Forum 
yesterday, with their pilgrim staves, in the fashion of 

a thousand years ago I sat down on a bench 

near one of the chapels, and a woman immediately 
came up to me to beg. I at first refused ; but she 
knelt down by my side, instead of praying to the saint 
prayed to me ; and, being thus treated as a canonized 
personage, I thought it incumbent on me to be gra- 
cious to the extent of half a paul. My wife, some 
time ago, came in contact with a pickpocket at the 
entrance of a church ; and, failing in his enterprise 
upon her purse, he passed in, dipped his thieving fin- 
gers in the holy water, and paid his devotions at a 
shrine. Missing the purse, he said his prayers, in 
the hope, perhaps, that the saint would send him bet- 
ter luck another time. 

April 10th. — I have made no entries in my journal 
recently, being exceedingly lazy, partly from indispo- 
sition, as w^ell as from an atmosphere that takes the 
vivacity out of everybody. Not much has happened 
or been effected. Last Sunday, which was Easter 

Sunday, I went with J to St. Peter's, where we 

arrived at about nine o'clock, and found a multitude 



Ife58.] ITALY. 159 

of people already avssembled in the church. The in- 
terior was arrayed in festal guise, there being a cover- 
ing of scarlet damask over the pilasters of the nave, 
from base to capital, giving an effect of splendor, yet 
with a loss as to the apparent dimensions of the in- 
terior. A guard of soldiers occupied the nave, keep- 
ing open a wide space for the passage of a procession 
that was momently expected, and soon arrived. The 
crowd was too great to allow of my seeing it in detail ; 
but I could perceive that there were priests, cardinals, 
Swiss guards, some of them with corselets on, and 
by and by the pope himself was borne up the nave, 
high over the heads of all, sitting under a canopy 
crowned with his tiara. He floated slowly along, and 
was set down in the neighborhood of the high altar ; 
and the procession being broken up, some of its scat- 
tered members might be seen here and there, about 
the church, — officials in antique Spanish dresses ; Swiss 
guards, in polished steel breastplates ; serving men, 
in richly embroidered liveries ; officers, in scarlet coats 
and military boots; priests, and divers other shapes 
of men ; for the papal ceremonies seem to forego little 
or nothing that belongs to times past, while it includes 
everything appertaining to the present. I ought to 
have waited to witness the papal benediction from the 
balcony in front of the church ; or, at least, to hear 
the famous silver trumpets, sounding from the dome ; 

but J grew weary (to say the truth, so did I), and 

we went on a long walk, out of the nearest city gate, 
and back through the Janiculum, and, finally, home- 
ward over the Ponto Rotto. Standing on the bridge,. 



160 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

I saw the arch of the Cloaca Maxima, close by the 
Temple of Vesta, with the water rising within two or 
three feet of its keystone. 

The same evening we went to Monte Cavallo, where, 
from the gateway of the Pontifical Palace, we saw the 
illumination of St. Peter's. Mr. Akers, the sculptor, 
had recommended this position to us, and accompa- 
nied us thither, as the best point from which the illu- 
mination could be witnessed at a distance, without 
the incommodity of such a crowd as would be as- 
sembled at the Pincian. The first illumination, the 
silver one, as it is called, was very grand and delicate, 
describing the outline of the great edifice and crown- 
ing dome in light ; while the day was not yet wholly 

departed. As finally remarked, it seemed like 

the glorified spirit of the Church, made visible, or, as 
I will add, it looked as this famous and never-to-be- 
forgotten structure will look to the imaginations of 
men, through the waste and gloom of future ages, 
after it shall have gone quite to decay and ruin : 
the brilliant, though scarcely distinct gleam of a 
statelier dome than ever was seen, shining on the 
background of the night of Time. This simile looked 
prettier in my fancy than I have made it look on 
paper. 

After we had enjoyed the silver illumination a good 
while, and when all the daylight had given place to 
the constellated night, the distant outline of St. 
Peter's burst forth, in the twinkling of an eye, into a 
starry blaze, being quite the finest eff'ect that I ever 
witnessed. I stayed to see it, however, only a few 



1858] ITALY. 161 

minutes; for I was quite ill and feverish with a cold, — 
which, indeed, I have seldom been free from, since 
my first breathing of the genial atmosphere of Rome. 
This pestilence kept me within doors all the next 
day, and prevented me from seeing the beautiful 
fireworks that were exhibited in the evening from the 
platform on the Pincian, above the Piazza del 
Popolo. 

On Thursday, I paid another visit to the sculpture- 
gallery of the Capitol, where I was particularly struck 
with a bust of Cato the Censor, who must have been 
the most disagreeable, stubborn, ugly- tempered, pig- 
headed, narrow-minded, strong-willed old Roman that 
ever lived. The collection of busts here and at the 
Vatican are most interesting, many of the individual 
heads being full of character, and commending them- 
selves by intrinsic evidence as faithful portraits of the 
originals. These stone people have stood face to 
face with Caesar, and all the other emperors, and 
with statesmen, soldiers, philosophers, and poets 
of the antique w^orld, and have been to them like 
their reflections in a mirror. It is the next thing to 
seeing the men themselves. 

We went afterwards into the Palace of the Conser- 
vatori, and saw, among various other interesting 
things, the bronze wolf suckling Romulus and Re- 
mus, who sit beneath her dugs, with open mouths 
to receive the milk. 

On Friday, we all went to see the Pope's Palace 
on the Quirinal. There was a vast hall, and an 
interminable suite of rooms, cased with marble, 



162 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

floored with marble or mosaics or inlaid wood, 
adorned with frescos on the vaulted ceilings, and 
many of them lined with Gobelin tapestry ; not 
wofully faded, like almost all that I have hitherto 
seen, but brilliant as pictures. Indeed, some of 
them so closely resembled paintings, that I could 
hardly believe they were not so ; and the effect 
was even richer than that of oil-paintings. In every 
room there w^as a crucifix ; but I did not see a 
single nook or corner where anybody could have 
dreamed of being comfortable. Nevertheless, as 
a stately and solemn residence for his holiness, it 
is quite a satisfactory affair. Afterwards, we went 
into the Pontifical Gardens, connected with the 
palace. They are very extensive, and laid out in 
straight avenues, bordered with walls of box. as 
impervious as if of stone, — not less than twenty 
feet high, and pierced with lofty archways, cut 
in the living wall. Some of the avenues were 
overshadow^ed with trees, the tops of which bent 
over and joined one another from either side, so 
as to resemble a side-aisle of a Gothic cathedral. 
Marble sculptures, much weather-stained, and gen- 
erally broken-nosed, stood along these stately walks / 
there were many fountains gushing up into the 
sunshine ; we likewise found a rich flower-garden, 
containing' rare specimens of exotic flowers, and 
gigantic cactuses, and also an aviary, with vultures, 
doves, and singing birds. We did not see half 
the garden, but, stiff and formal as its general 
arrangement is, it is a beautiful place, — a delight- 



1858.] ITALY. 163 

ful, sunny, and serene seclusion. Whatever it may 
be to the pope, two young lovers might find the 
Garden of Eden here, and never desire to stray 
out of its precincts. They might fancy angels 
standing in the long, glimmering vistas of the 
avenues. 

It would suit me well enough to have my daily 
walk along such straight paths, for I think them 
favorable to thought, which is apt to be disturbed by 
variety and imexpectedness. 

April I2th. — We all, except E, , went to-day 

to the Vatican, where we found our way to the 
Stanze of Raphael, these being four rooms, or 
•halls, painted with frescos. No doubt they were 
once very brilliant and beautiful; but they have 
encountered hard treatment since Raphael's time, 
especially when the soldiers of the Constable de 
Bourbon occupied these apartments, and made fires 
on the mosaic floors. The entire walls and ceilings 
are covered with pictures; but the handiwork or 
designs of Raphael consist of paintings on the 
four sides of each room, and include several works 
of art. The School of Athens is perhaps the most 
celebrated ; and the longest side of the largest 
hall is occupied by a battle-piece, of which the 
Emperor Constantino is the hero, and which covers 
almost space enough for a real battle-field. There 
was a wonderful light in one of the pictures, — that 
of St. Peter awakened in his prison, by the angel ; 
it really seemed to throw a radiance into the hall 
below. I shall not pretend, however, to have been 



164 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

sensible of any particular rapture at the sight of 
these frescos ; so faded as they are, so battered 
by the mischances of years, insomuch that, through 
all the power and glory of Raphael's designs, the 
spectator cannot but be continually sensible that 
the groundwork of them is an old plaster wall. 
They have been scrubbed, I suppose, — brushed, at 
least, — a thousand times over, till the surface, bril- 
liant or soft, as Raphael left it, must have been 
quite rubbed off, and with it, all the consummate 
finish, and everything that made them originally 
delightful. The sterner features remain, the skeleton 
of thought, but not the beauty that once clothed 
it. In truth, the frescos, excepting a few figures,' 
never had the real touch of Raphael's own hand 
upon them, having been merely designed by him, 
and finished by his scholars, or by other artists. 

The halls themselves are specimens of antique 
magnificence, paved with elaborate mosaics ; and 
wherever there is any woodwork, it is richly, carved 
with foliage and figures. In their newness, and 
probably for a hundred years afterwards, there could 
not have been so brilliant a suite of rooms in the 
world. 

Connected with them — at any rate, not far distant 
— is the little Chajjel of San Lorenzo, the very site 
of which, among the thousands of apartments of the 
Vatican, was long forgotten, and its existence only 
known by tradition. After it had been walled up, 
however, beyond the memory of man, there was still 
a rumor of some beautiful frescos by Fra Angelico, in 



1858.] ITALY. 165 

an old chapel of Pope Nicholas V., that had strangely- 
disappeared out of the palace, and, search at length 
being made, it was discovered, and entered through a 
•window. It is a small, lofty room, quite covered over 
with frescos of sacred subjects, both on the walls and 
ceiling, a good deal faded, yet pretty distinctly pre- 
served. It would have been no misfortune to me, if 
the little old chapel had remained still hidden. 

We next issued into the Loggie, which consist of 
a long gallery, or arcade or colonnade, the whole 
extent of which was once beautifully adorned by 
Raphael. These pictures are almost worn away, and 
so defaced as to be nntraceable and unintelligible, 
Along the side wall of the gallery ; although traceries 
of Arabesque, and compartments where there seem to 
have been rich paintings, but now only an indistin- 
guishable waste of dull color, are still to be seen. In 
the coved ceiling, however, there are still some bright 
frescos, in better preservation than any others ; not 
particularly beautiful, nevertheless. I remember to 
have seen (indeed, we ourselves possess them) a series 
of very spirited and energetic engravings, old and 
coarse, of these frescos, the subject being the Creation, 
and the early Scripture history ; and I really think 
that their translation of the pictures is better than 
the original. On reference to Murray, I find that 
little more than the designs is attributed to Raphael, 
the execution being by Giulio Romano and other 
artists. 

Escaping from these forlorn splendors, we went 
into the sculpture-gallery, where I was able to enjoy, 



1G6 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

ill some small degree, two or three wonderful works 
of art ; and had a perception that there were a 
thousand other wonders around me. It is as if the 
statues kept, for the most part, a veil about them, 
which they sometimes withdraw, and let their beauty 
gleam upon my sight ; only a glimpse, or two or 
three glimpses, or a little space of calm enjoyment, 
and then I see nothing but a discolored marble image 
again. The Minerva Medica revealed herself to-daj^ 
I wonder whether other people are more fortunate 
than myself, and can invariably find their way to the 
inner soul of a work of art. I doubt it ; they look 
at these things for just a minute, and pass on, 
without any pang of remorse, such as I feel, for 
quitting them so soon and so willingly. I am partly 
sensible that some unwritten rules of taste are making 
their way into my mind ; that all this Greek beauty 
has done something towards refining me, though I am 

still, however, a very sturdy Goth 

Jp7^il 15th. — Yesterday I went with J to the 

Forum, and descended into the excavations at the 
base of the Capitol, and on the site of the Basilica of 
Julia. The essential elements of old Rome are there : 
columns, single, or in groups of two or three, still 
erect, but battered and bruised at some forgotten time 
with infinite pains and labor ; fragments of other 
columns lying prostrate, together with rich capitals 
and friezes ; the bust of a colossal female statue, show- 
ing the bosom and upper part of the arms, but head- 
less ; a long, winding space of pavement, forming part 
of the ancient ascent to the Capitol, still as firm and 



1858.] ITALY. 167 

solid as ever ; the foundation of the Capitol itself, 
wonderfully massive, built of immense square blocks 
of stone, doubtless three thousand years old, and 
durable for whatever may be the lifetime of the 
world ; the Arch of Septimius Severus, with bas-reliefs 
of Eastern wars ; the Column of Phocas, with the rude 
series of steps ascending on four sides to its pedestal ; 
the floor of beautiful and precious marbles in the 
Basilica of Julia, the slabs cracked across, — the greater 
part of them torn up and removed, the grass and 
weeds growing up through the chinks of what remain ; 
heaps of bricks, shapeless bits of granite, and other 
ancient rubbish, among which old men are lazily 
rummaging for specimens that a stranger may be in- 
duced to buy, — this being an employment that suits 
the indolence of a modern Roman. The level of 
these excavations is about fifteen feet, I should judge, 
below the present street which passes through the 
Forum, and only a very small part of this alien sur- 
face has been removed, though there can be no doubt 
that it hides numerous treasures of art and monuments 
of history. Yet these remains do not make that im- 
pression of antiquity upon me, which Gothic ruins do. 
Perhaps it is so because they belong to quite another 
system of society and epoch of time, and in view of 
them, we forget all that has intervened betwixt them 
and us ; being morally unlike and disconnected with 
them, and not belonging to the same train of thought : 
so that we look across a gulf to the Roman ages, and 
do not realize how wide the gulf is. Yet in that in- 
tervening valley lie Christianity, the Dark Ages, the 



1C8 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

feudal system, chivalry and romance, and a deeper 
life of the human race than Rome brought to the 
verge of the gulf 

To-day we went to the Colonna Palace, where we 
saw some fine pictures, but, I think, no masterpieces. 
They did not depress and dishearten me so much as 
the pictures in Koman palaces usually do ; for they 
were in remarkably good order as regards frames and 
varnish ; indeed, I rather suspect some of them had 
been injured by the means adopted to preserve their 
beauty. The palace is now occupied by the French 
Ambassador, who probably looks upon the pictures as 
articles of furniture and household adornment, and 
does not choose to have squares of black and forlorn 
canvas upon his walls. There were a few noble por- 
traits by Vandyke ; a very striking one by Holbein, 
one or two by Titian, also by Guercino, and some 
pictures by Rubens, and other forestieri painters, 
which refreshed my weary eyes. But what chiefly 
interested me was the magnificent and stately hall of 
the palace ; fifty-five of my paces in length, besides a 
large apartment at either end, opening into it through 
a pillared space, as wide as the gateway of a city. 
The pillars are of giallo antico, and there are pilasters 
of the same all the way up and down the walls, form- 
ing a perspective of the richest aspect, especially as 
the broad cornice flames with gilding, and the spaces 
between the pilasters are emblazoned with heraldic 
achievements and emblems in gold, and there are Ve- 
netian looking-glasses, richly decorated over the sur- 
face with beautiful pictures of flowers and Cupids, 



1858.] ITALY. 169 

through which you catch the gleam of the mirror; 
and two rows of splendid chandeliers extend from end 
to end of the hall, which, when lighted up, if ever it 
be lighted up, now-a-nights, must be the most bril- 
liant interior that ever mortal eye beheld. The ceil- 
ing glows with pictures in fresco, representing scenes 
connected with the history of the Colonna family; 
and the floor is paved with beautiful marbles, polished 
and arranged in square and circular compartments; 
and each of the many windows is set in a great archi- 
tectural frame of precious marble, as large as the por- 
tal of a door. The apartment at the farther end of 
the hall is elevated above it, and is attained by several 
marble steps, whence it must have been glorious in 
former days to have looked down upon a gorgeous 
throng of princes, cardinals, warriors, and ladies, in 
such rich attire as might be worn when the palace 
was built. It is singular how much freshness and 
brightness it still retains ; and the only objects to 
mar the effect were some ancient statues and busts, 
not very good in themselves, and now made dreary of 
aspect by their colored surfaces, — the result of long 
burial under ground. 

In the room at the entrance of the hall are two 
cabinets, each a wonder in its way, — one being adorned 
with precious stones ; the other with ivory carvings 
of Michael Angelo's Last Judgment, and of the fres- 
cos of Raphael's Loggie. The world has ceased to 
be so magnificent as it once was. Men make no such 
marvels nowadays. The only defect that I remember 
in this hall was in the marble steps that ascend to 

VOL. I. 8 



170 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

the elevated apartment at the end of it ; a large piece 
had been broken out of one of them, leaving a rough 
irregular gap in the polished marble stair. It is not 
easy to conceive what violence can have done this, 
without also doing mischief to all the other splendor 
around it. 

April IQth. — We went this morning to the Acade- 
my of St. Luke (the Fine Arts Academy at Rome) in 
the Via Bonella, close by the Forum. We rang the 
bell at the house door ; and after a few moments it 
was unlocked or unbolted by some unseen agency from 
above, no one making his appearance to admit us. 
We ascended two or three flights of stairs, and en- 
tered a hall, where was a young man, the custode, 
and two or three artists engaged in copying some of 
the pictures. The collection not being vastly large, 
and the pictures being in more presentable condition 
than usual, I enjoyed them more than I generally do ; 
particularly a Virgin and Child by Vandyke, where 
two angels are singing and playing, one on a lute and 
the other on a violin, to remind the holy infant of the 
Strains he used to hear in heaven. It is one of the 
few pictures that there is really any pleasure in look- 
ing at. There were several paintings by Titian, most- 
ly of a voluptuous character, but not very charming ; 
also two or more by Guido, one of which, representing 
Fortune, is celebrated. They did not impress me 
much, nor do I find myself strongly drawn towards 
Guido, though there is no other painter who seems to 
achieve things so magically and inscrutably as he 
sometimes does. Perhaps it requires a finer taste 



1858.] ITALY. ] 71 

than mine to appreciate him ; and yet I do appreciate 
him so far as to see that his Michael, for instance, is 

perfectly beautiful In the gallery, there are 

whole rows of portraits of members of the Academy 
of St. Luke, most of whom, judging by their physiog- 
nomies, were very commonplace people ; a fact, which 
makes itself visible in a portrait, however much the 
painter may try to flatter his sitter. Several of the 
pictures by Titian, Paul Veronese, and other artists, 
now exhibited in the gallery, were formerly kept in a 
secret cabinet in the Capitol, being considered of a too 
voluptuous character for the public eye. I did not 
think them noticeably indecorous, as compared with a 
hundred other pictures that are shown and looked at 
without scruple ; — Calypso and her nymphs, a knot 
of nude women by Titian, is perhaps as objectionable 
as any. But even Titian's flesh tints cannot keep, and 
have not kept their warmth through all these centu- 
ries. The illusion and lifelikeness effervesces and ex- 
hales out of a picture as it grows old ; and we go on 
talking of a charm that has forever vanished. 

From St. Luke's we went to San Pietro, in Yinioli, 
occupying a fine position on or near the summit of 
the Esquiline mount. A little abortion of a man 
(and, by the by, there are more diminutive and ill- 
shapen men and women in Eome than I ever saw 
elsewhere, a phenomenon to be accounted for, per- 
haps, by their custom of wrapping the new-born infant 
in swaddling-clothes), this two-foot abortion hastened 
before us, as we drew nigh, to summon the sacristan 
to open the church door. It was a needless service, 



172 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

for which we rewarded him with two baiocchi. San 
Pietro is a simple and noble church, consisting of a 
nave divided from the side-aisles by rows of columns, 
that once adorned some ancient temple ; and its wide, 
unencumbered interior affords better breathing space 
than most churches in Rome. The statue of Moses 
occupies a niche in one of the side-aisles on the right, 
not far from the high altar. I found it grand and 
sublime, with a beard flowing down like a cataract ; a 
truly majestic figure, but not so benign as it were 
desirable that such strength should be. The horns, 
about which so much has been said, are not a very 
prominent feature of the statue, being merely two 
diminutive tips rising straight up over his forehead, 
neither adding to the grandeur of the head, nor 
detracting sensibly from it. The whole force of this 
statue is not to be felt in one brief visit, but I agree 
with an English gentleman who, with a large party, 
entered the church while we were there, in thinking 
that Moses has " very fine features," — a compliment 
for which the colossal Hebrew ought to have made 
the Englishman a bow. 

Besides the Moses, the church contains some 
attractions of a pictorial kind, which are reposited in 
the sacristy, into which we passed through a side 
door. The most remarkable of these pictures is a 
face and bust of Hope, by Guido, with beautiful eyes 
lifted upwards ; it has a grace which artists are con- 
tinually trying to get into their innumerable copies, 
but always without success ; for, indeed, though noth- 
ing is more true than the existence of this charm in 



1858.] ITALY. 173 

the picture, jet if 3^ou try to analyze it, or even look 
too intently at it, it vanishes, till you look again with 
more trusting simplicity. 

Leaving the church, we wandered to the Coliseum, 
and to the public grounds contiguous to them, where 
a score and more of French drummers were beating 
each man his drum, without reference to any rub-a- 
dub but his own. This seems to be a daily or period- 
ical practice and point of duty with them. After 
resting ourselves on one of the marble benches, we 
came slowly home, through the Basilica of Constan- 
tine, and along the shady sides of the streets and 
piazzas, sometimes, perforce, striking boldly through 
the white sunshine, which, however, was not so hot as 
to shrivel us up bodily. It has been a most beautiful 
and perfect day as regards weather, clear and bright, 
very warm in the sunshine, yet fresheneH throughout 
by a quiet stir in the air. Still there is something in 
this air malevolent, or, at least, not friendly. The 
Romans lie down and fall asleep in it, in any vacant 
part of the streets, and wherever they can find any 
spot sufficiently clean, and among the ruins of temples. 
I would not sleep in the open air for whatever my life 
msij be worth. 

On our way home, sitting in one of the narrow 
streets, we saw an old woman spinning with a distaff ; 
a far more ancient implement than the spinning- 
wheel, which the housewives of other nations have 
long since laid aside. 

April IStk. — Yesterday, at noon, the whole family 
of us set out on a visit to the Villa Borghese and its 



174 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

grounds, the entrance to which is just outside of the 
Porta del Popolo. After getting within the grounds, 
however, there is a long walk before reaching the 
casino, and we found the sun rather uncomfortably 
hot, and the road dusty and white in the sunshine ; 
nevertheless, a footpath ran alongside of it most of 
the way through the grass and among the young 
trees. It seems to me that the trees do not put forth 
their leaves with nearly the same magical rapidity in 
this southern land at the approach of summer, as they 
do in more northerly countries. In these latter, hav- 
ing a much shorter time to develop themselves, they 
feel the necessity of making the most of it. But the 
grass, in the lawns and enclosures along which we 
passed, looked already fit to be mowed, and it was 
interspersed with many flowers. 

Saturday iDeing, I believe, the only day of the week 
on which visitors are admitted to the casino, there 
were many parties in carriages, artists on foot, gentle- 
men on horseback, and miscellaneous people, to whom 
the door was opened by a custode on ringing a bell. 
The whole of the basement floor of the casino, com- 
prising a suite of beautiful rooms, is filled with statu- 
ary. The entrance hall is a very splendid apartment, 
brightly frescoed, and paved with ancient mosaics, 
representing the combats with beasts and gladiators 
in the Coliseum, curious, though very rudely and 
awkwardly designed, apparently after the arts had 
begun to decline. Many of the specimens of sculp- 
ture displayed in these rooms are fine, but none of 
them, I think, possess the highest merit. An Apollo 



IBS^B.] ITALY. 175 

is beautiful ; a group of a fighting Amazon, and her 
enemies trampled under her horse's feet, is very im- 
pressive ; a Faun, copied from that of Praxiteles, and 
another, who seems to be dancing, were exceedingly 
pleasant to look at. I like these strange, sweet, play- 
ful, rustic creatures, .... linked so prettily, with- 
out monstrosity, to the lower tribes. .... Their 
character has never, that I know of, been wrought out 
in literature ; and something quite good, funny, and 
philosophical, as well as poetic, might very likely be 

educed from them The faun is a natural and 

delightful link betwixt human and brute life, with 
something of a divine character intermingled. 

The gallery, as it is called, on the basement floor of 
the casino, is sixty feet in length, by perhaps a third 
as much in breadth, and is (after all I have seen at 
the Colonna Palace and elsewhere) a more magnificent 
hall than I imagined to be in existence. It is floored 
with rich marble in beautifully arranged compart- 
ments, and the walls are almost entirely cased with 
marble of various sorts, the prevailing kind being 
giallo antico, intermixed with verde antique, and I 
know not what else ; but the splendor of the giallo 
antico gives the character to the room, and the large 
and deep niches along the walls appear to be lined with 
the same material. Without coming to Italy, one can 
have no idea of what beauty and magnificence are pro- 
duced by these fittings up of polished marble. Marble 
to an American means nothing but white limestone. 

This hall, moreover, is adorned with pillars of 
Oriental alabaster, and wherever is a space vacant of 



176 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l658. 

precious and richly colored marble it is frescoed with 
arabesque ornaments ; and over the whole is a coved 
and vaulted ceiling, glowing with picture. There 
never can be anything richer than the whole effect. 
As to the sculpture here it was not very fine, so far 
as I can remember, consisting chiefly of busts of the 
emperors in porphyry ; but they served a good j^ur- 
pose in the upholstery way. There were also magnifi- 
cent tables, each composed of one gi'eat slab of por- 
phyry ; and also vases of nero antico, and other rarest 
substance. It remains to be mentioned that, on this 
almost summer day, I was quite chilled in passing 
through these glorious halls ; no fireplace anywhere ; 
no possibility of comfort ; and in the hot season, w^hen 
their coolness might be agreeable, it would be death 
to inhabit them. 

Ascending a long winding staircase, we arrived at 
another suite of rooms, containing a good many not 
very remarkable pictures, and a few more pieces of 
statuary. Among the latter, is Canova's statue of 
Pauline, the sister of Bonaparte, who is represented 
with but little drapery, and in the character of Venus 
holding the apple in her hand. It is admirably done, 
and, I have no doubt, a perfect likeness ; very beauti- 
ful too ; but it is wonderful to see how the artificial 
elegance of the woman of this world makes itself per- 
ceptible in spite of whatever simplicity she could find 
in almost utter nakedness. The statue does not afford 
pleasure in the contemplation. 

In one of these upper rooms are some works of 
Bernini ; two of them, ^neas and Anchises, and 



1858.] ■ ITALY. 177 

David on the point of slinging a stone at Goliah, 
have great merit, and do not tear and rend them- 
selves quite out of the laws and limits of marble, like 
his later sculpture. Here is also his Apollo over- 
taking Daphne, whose feet take root, whose finger- 
tips sprout into twigs, and whose tender body 
roughens round about with bark, as he embraces 
her. It did not seem very wonderful to me; not 
so good as Hillyard's description of it made me 
expect; and one does not enjoy these freaks in 
marble. 

We were glad to emerge from the casino into the 
warm sunshine ; and, for my part, I made the best of 
my way to a large fountain, surrounded by a circular 
stone seat of wide sweep, and sat down in a sunny 
segment of the circle. Around grew a solemn com- 
pany of old trees, — ilexes, I believe, — with huge, con- 
torted trunks and evergreen branches, .... deep 
groves, sunny openings, the airy gush of fountains, 
marble statues, dimly visible in recesses of foliage, 
great urns and vases, terminal figures, temples, — all 
these works of art looking as if they had stood there 
long enough to feel at home, and to be on friendly and 
familiar terms with the grass and trees. It is a most 
beautiful place, .... and the Malaria is its true 
master and inhabitant ! 

April 22d. — We have been recently to the studio 
of Mr. Brown,* the American landscape-painter, and 
were altogether surprised and delighted with his 
pictures. He is a plain, homely Yankee, quite unpol- 

* Now dead. 
8* L 



178 FKENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

ished by his many years* residence in Italy; he talks 
ungrammatically, and in Yankee idioms ; walks with a 
strange, awkward gait and stooping shoulders; is alto- 
gether unpicturesque ; but wins one's confidence by 
his very lack of grace. It is not often that we see an 
artist so entirely free from affectation in his aspect 
and deportment. His pictures were views of Swiss 
and Italian scenery, and were most beautiful and trua 
One of them, a moonlight picture, was really magical, — 
the moon shining so brightly that it seemed to throw 
a light even beyond the limits of the picture, — and 
yet his sunrises and sunsets, and noontides too, were 
nowise inferior to this, although their excellence re- 
quired somewhat longer study, to be fully appreciated. 
I seemed to receive more pleasure from Mr. Brown's 
pictures than from any of the landscapes by the old 
masters ; and the fact serves to strengthen me in the 
belief that the most delicate if not the highest charm 
of a picture is evanescent, and that we continue to 
admire pictures prescriptively and by tradition, after 
the qualities that first won them their fame have 
vanished. I suppose Claude was a greater landscape- 
painter than Brown ; but for my own pleasure I would 
prefer one of the latter artist's pictures, — those of the 
former being quite changed from what he intended 
them to be by the effect of time on his pigments. Mr. 
Brown showed us some drawings from nature, done 
with incredible care and minuteness of detail, as studies 
for his paintings. We complimented him on his 
patience ; but he said, " 0, it 's not patience, — it 's 
love ! " In fact, it was a patient and most successful 



1858.] ITALY. 179 

wooing of a beloved object, which at last rewarded 
him by yielding itself wholly. 

We have likewise been to Mr. B— 's * studio, 

where we saw several pretty statues and busts, and 
among them an Eve, with her wreath of fig-leaves 
lying across her poor nudity ; comely in some points, 
but with a frightful volume of thighs and calves. I 
do not altogether see the necessity of ever sculpturing 
another nakedness. Man is no longer a naked animal; 
his clothes are as natural to him as his skin, and sculp^ 
tors have no more right to imdress him than to flay him. 

Also, we have seen again William Story's Cleo- 
patra, — a work of genuine thought and energy, rep- 
resenting a terribly dangerous woman ; quite enough 
for the moment, but very likely to spring upon you 
like a tigress. It is delightful to escape to his 
creations from this universal prettiness, which seems 
to be the highest conception of the crowd of modern 
sculptors, and which they almost invariably attain. 

Miss Bremer called on us the other day. We find 
her very little changed from what she was when she 
came to take tea and spend an evening at our little 
red cottage, among the Berkshire hills, and went 
away so dissatisfied with my conversational perform- 
ances, and so laudatory of my brow and eyes, while 
so severely criticizing my poor mouth and chin. She 
is the funniest little old fairy in person whom one 
can imagine, with a huge nose, to which all the rest 
of her is but an insufficient appendage ; but you feel 
at once that she is most gentle, kind, womanly, 

* Now dead. 



180 FKENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

sympathetic, aod true. She talks English fluently, 
in a low quiet voice, but with such an accent that it 
is impossible to understand her without the closest 
attention. This -was the real cause of the failure of 
our Berkshire interview ; for I could not guess, half 
the time, what she was saying, and, of course, had to 
take an uncertain aim with my responses. A more 
intrepid talker than myself would have shouted his 
ideas across the gulf; but, for me, there must first 
be a close and unembarrassed contiguity with my 
companion, or I cannot say one real word. I doubt 
whether I have ever really talked with half a dozen 
persons in my life, either men or women. 

To-day my wife and I have been at the picture and 
sculpture galleries of the Capitol. I rather enjoyed 
looking at several of the pictures, though at this 
moment I particularly remember only a very beautiful 
face of a man, one of two heads on the same canvas, 
by Vandyke. Yes ; I did look with new admiration 
at Paul Veronese's " Rape of Europa." It must have 
been, in its day, the most brilHant and rejoicing 
picture, the most voluptuous, the most exuberant, that 
ever put the sunshine to shame. The bull has all 
Jupiter in him, so tender and gentle, yet so passionate, 
that you feel it indecorous to look at him ; and 
Europa, under her thick, rich stuffs and embroideries, 
is all a woman. What a pity that such a picture 
should fade, and perplex the beholder with such 
splendor, shining through such forlornness ! 

We afterwards went into the sculpture-gallery, 
where I looked at the Faun of Praxiteles, and w^as 



1858.] ITALY. 181 

sensible of a peculiar charm in it; a sylvan beauty 
and homeliness, friendly and wild at once. The 
lengthened, but not preposterous ears, and the little 
tail, which we infer, have an exquisite effect, and 
make the spectator smile in his very heart. This 
race of fauns was the most delightful of all that 
antiquity imagined. It seems to me that a story, 
with all sorts of fun and pathos in it, might be con- 
trived on the idea of their species having become 
intermingled with the human race ; a family with the 
faun blood in them, having prolonged itself from the 
classic era till our own days. The tail might have 
disappeared, by dint of constant intermarriages with 
ordinary mortals ; but the pretty hairy ears should 
occasionally reappear in members of the family ; and 
the moral instincts and intellectual characteristics of 
the faun might be most picturesquely brought out, 
w^ithout detriment to the human interest of the story. 
ii'ancy this combination in the person of a young lady ! 

I have spoken of Mr. Gibson's colored statues. It 
seems (at least Mr. Nichols tells me) that he stains 

them with tobacco juice Were he to send a 

Cupid to America, he need not trouble himself to 
stain it beforehand. 

April 25th. — Night before last, my wife and I took 
a moonlight ramble through Rome, it being a very- 
beautiful night, warm enough for comfort, and with 
no perceptible dew or dampness. We set out at 
about nine o'clock, and, our general direction being 
towards the Coliseum, we soon came to the Fountain 
of Trevi, full on the front of which the moonlight fell, 



182 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS [l85^ 

making Bernini's sculptures look stately and beautiful; 
though the semicircular gush and fall of the cascade, 
and the many jets of the water, pouring and bubbling 
into the great marble basin, are of far more account 
than Neptune and his steeds, and the rest of the 
figures 

We ascended the Capitoline Hill, and I felt a satis- 
faction in placing my hand on those immense blocks 
of stone, the remains of the ancient Capitol, which 
form the foundation of the present edifice, and will 
make a sure basis for as many edifices as posterity 
may choose to rear upon it, till the end of the world. 
It is wonderful, the solidity with which those old 
Romans built ; one would suppose they contem- 
plated the whole course of Time as the only limit of 
their individual life. This is not so strange in the 
days of the Republic, when, probably, they believed 
in the permanence of their institutions ; but they still 
seemed to build for eternity, in the reigns of the 
emperors, when neither rulers nor people had any 
faith or moral substance, or laid any earnest grasp on 
life. 

Reaching the top of the Capitoline Hill, we ascended 
the steps of the portal of the Palace of the Sen- 
ator, and looked down into the piazza, with the 
equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius in the centre of 
it. The architecture that surrounds the piazza is 
very ineffective ; and so, in my opinion, are all the 
other architectural works of Michael Angelo, in- 
cluding St. Peter's itself, of which he has made as 
little as could possibly be made of such a vast pile of 



1858.] ITALY. 183 

material. He balances everything in such a way that 
it seems but half of itself. 

We soon descended into the piazza, and walked 
round and round the statue of Marcus Aurelius, con- 
templating it from every point and admiring it in all. 
.... On these beautiful moonlight nights, Rome 
appears to keep awake and stirring, though in a quiet 
and decorous way. It is, in fact, the pleasantest time 
for promenades, and we both felt less wearied than by 
any promenade in the daytime, of similar extent, since 
our residence in Rome. In future, I mean to walk 
often after nightfall. 

Yesterday, we set out betimes, and ascended the 
dome of St. Peter's. The best view of the interior of 
the church, I think, is from the first gallery beneath 
the dome. The whole inside of the dome is set M'ith 
'mosaic-work, the separate pieces being, so far as I 
could see, about half an inch square. Emerging on 
the roof, we had a fine view of all the surrounding 
Rome, including the Mediterranean Sea in the remote 
distance. Above us still rose the whole mountain of 
the great dome, and it made an impression on me of 
greater height and size than I had yet been able to 
receive. The copper ball at the summit looked hardly 
bigger than a man could lift ; and yet, a little while 

afterwards, U , J , and I stood all together in 

that ball, which could have contained a dozen more 
along with us. The esplanade of the roof is, of 
course, very extensive ; and along the front of it are 
ranged the statues which we see from below, and 
which, on nearer examination, prove to be roughly 



184 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

hewn giants. There is a small house on the roof, 
where, probably, the custodes of this part of the 
edifice reside ; and there is a fountain gushing abun- 
dantly into a stone trough, that looked like an old 
sarcophagus. It is strange where the water comes 
from at such a height. The children tasted it, and 
pronounced it very warm and disagreeable. After 
taking in the prospect on all sides we rang a bell, 
which summoned a man, who directed us towards a 
door in the side of the dome, where a custode was 
waiting to admit us. Hitherto the ascent had been 
easy, along a slope without stairs, up which, I believe, 
people sometimes ride on donkeys. The rest of the 
way we mounted steep and narrow staircases, winding 
round within the wall, or between the two walls of the 
dome, and growing narrower and steeper, till, finally, 
there is but a perpendicular iron ladder, by means of * 
which to climb into the copper ball. Except through 
small windows and peep-holes, there is no external 
prospect of a higher point than the roof of the church. 
Just beneath the ball there is a circular room capable 
of containing a large company, and a door which 
ought to give access to a gallery on the outside ; but 
the custode informed us that this door is never opened. 

As I have said, U , J , and I clambered into 

the copper ball, which we found as hot as an oven ; 
and, after putting our hands on its top, and on the 
summit of St. Peter's, were glad to clamber down 
again. I have made some mistake, after all, in my 
narration. There certainly is a circular balcony at 
the top of the dome, for I remember walking round 



1858.] ITALY. 185 

it, and looking, not only across the country, but down- 
wards along the ribs of the dome ; to which are 
attached the iron contrivances for illuminating it on 

Easter Sunday 

Before leaving the church we went to look at the 
mosaic copy of the " Transfiguration," because we were 
going to see the original in the Vatican, and wished 
to compare the two. Going round to the entrance of 
the Vatican, w^e went first to the manufactory of 
mosaics, to which we had a ticket of admission. We 
found it a long series of rooms, in which the mosaic 
artists were at work, chiefly in making some medal- 
lions of the heads of saints for the new church of 
St. Paul's. It was rather coarse work, and it seemed 
to me that the mosaic copy was somewhat stifFer and 
more wooden than the original, the bits of *stone not 
flowing into color quite so freely as paint from a 
brush. There was no large picture now in process 
of being copied ; but two or three artists were em- 
ployed on small and delicate subjects. One had a 
Holy Family of Raphael in hand ; and the Sibyls of 
Guercino and Domenichino were hanging on the 
wall, apparently ready to be put into mosaic. 
Wherever great skill and delicacy, on the artists' 
part, were necessary, they seemed quite adequate 
to the occasion ; but, after all, a mosaic of any 
celebrated picture is but a copy of a copy. The 
substance employed is a stone-paste, of innumerable 
difi'erent veins, and in bits of various sizes, quanti- 
ties of which were seen in cases along the whole 
series of rooms. 



186 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

We next ascended an amazing height of staircases, 
and walked along I know not what extent of passa- 
ges, .... till we reached the picture-gallery of the 
Vatican, into which I had never been before. There 
are but three rooms, all lined with red velvet, on 
which hung about fifty pictures, each one of them, 
no doubt, worthy to be considered a masterpiece. 
In the first room were three Murillos, all so beauti- 
ful that I could have spent the day happily in look- 
ing at either of them ; for, methinks, of all painters 
he is the tenderest and truest. I could not enjoy 
these pictures now, however, because in the next 
room, and visible through the open door, hung the 
"Transfiguration." Approaching it, I felt that the 
picture was worthy of its fame, and was far better 
than I could at once appreciate ; admirably preserved, 
too, though I fully believe it must have possessed 
a charm when it left Raphael's hand that has now 
vanished forever. As church furniture and an ex- 
ternal adornment, the mosaic copy is preferable to 
the original, but no copy could ever reproduce all 
the life and expression which we see here. Opposite 
to it hangs the " Communion of St. Jerome," the aged, 
dying saint, half torpid with death already, partaking 
of the sacrament, and a sunny garland of cherubs in 
the upper part of the picture, looking down upon him, 
and quite comforting the spectator with the idea that 
the old man needs only to be quite dead in order to 
flit away with them. As for the other pictures I did 
but glance at, and have forgotten them. 

The "Transfiguration" is finished with great minute- 



1858.] ITALY. 187 

ness and detail, the weeds and blades of grass in 
the foreground being as distinct as if they were 
gi'owing in a natural soil. A partly decayed stick 
of wood with the bark is likewise given in close 
imitation of nature. The reflection of a foot of one 
of the apostles is seen in a pool of water at the verge 
of the picture. One or two heads and arms seem 
almost to project from the canvas. There is great 
lifelikeness and reality, as well as higher qualities. 
The face of Jesus, being so high aloft and so small 
in the distance, I could not well see ; but I am im- 
pressed with the idea that it looks too much like 
human flesh and blood to be in keeping with the 
celestial aspect of the figure, or with the probabilities 
of the scene, when the divinity and immortality of 
the Saviour beamed from within him through the 
earthly features that ordinarily shaded him. As 
regards the composition of the picture, I am not 
convinced of the propriety of its being in two so 
distinctly separate parts, — the upper portion not 
thinking of the lower, and the lower portion not 
being aware of the higher. It symbolizes, however, 
the spiritual shortsightedness of mankind that, amid 
the trouble and grief of the lower picture, not a 
single individual, either of those who seek help or 
those who would willingly aff'ord it, lifts his eyes 
to that region, one glimpse of which would set 
everything right. One or two of the disciples point 
upward, but without really knowing what abundance 
of help is to be had there. 

April 21 th, — To-day we have all been with Mr. 



188 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

Akers to some studios of painters ; first to that of Mr. 
Wilde, an artist originally from Boston. His pictures 
are principally of scenes from Venice, and are miracles 
of color, being as bright as if the light were trans- 
mitted through rubies and sapphires. And yet, after 
contemplating them awhile, we became convinced that 
the painter had not gone in the least beyond nature, 
but, on the contrary, had fallen short of brilliancies 
which no palette, or skill, or boldness in using color, 
could attain. I do not quite know whether it is best 
to attempt these things. They may be found in 
nature, no doubt, but always so tempered by what 
surrounds them, so put out of sight even while they 
seem full before our eyes, that we question the 
accuracy of a faithful reproduction of them on canvas. 
There was a picture of sunset, the whole sky of which 
would have outshone- any gilded frame that could 
have been put around it. There was a most gorgeous 
sketch of a handful of weeds and leaves, such as may 
be seen strewing acres of forest-groimd in an American 
autumn. I doubt whether any other man has ever 
ventured to paint a picture like either of these two, 
the Italian sunset or the American autumnal foliage. 
Mr. Wilde, who is still young, talked with genuine 
feeling and enthusiasm of his art, and is certainly a 
man of genius. 

We next went to the studio of an elderly Swiss 
artist, named Miiller, I believe, where we looked at a 
great many water-color and crayon drawings of scenes 
in Italy, Greece, and Switzerland. The artist was a 
quiet, respectable, somewhat heavy-looking old gentle 



1858] ITALY. 189 

man, from whose aspect one would expect a plodding 
pertinacity of character rather than quickness of sen- 
sibility. He must have united both these qualities, 
however, to produce such pictures as these, such 
faithful transcripts of whatever Nature has most 
beautiful to show, and which she shows only to those 
who love her deeply and patiently. They are wonder- 
ful pictures, compressing plains, seas, and mountains, 
with miles and miles of distance, into the space of a 
foot or two without crowding anything or leaving out 
a feature, and diffusing the free, blue atmosphere 
throughout. The works of the EngHsh water-color 
artists which I saw at the Manchester Exhibition 
seemed to me nowise equal to these. Now, here are 
three artists, Mr. Browne, Mr. Wilde, and Mr. Miiller, 
who have smitten me with vast admiration within 
these few days past, while I am continually turning 
away disappointed from the landscapes of the most 
famous among the old masters, unable to find any 
charm or illusion in them. Yet I suppose Claude, 
Poussin, and Salvator Rosa must have won their 
renown by real achievements. But the glory of a 
picture fades like that of a flower. 

Contiguous to Mr. Miiller' s studio was that of a 
young German artist, not long resident in Rome, and 
Mr. Akers proposed that we should go in there, as a 
matter of kindness to the young man, who is scarcely 
known at all, and seldom has a visitor to look at his 
pictures. His studio comprised his whole establish- 
ment; for there was his little bed, with its white 
drapery, in a corner of the small room, and his dress- 



190 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTEBOOKS. [l858. 

ing-table, with its brushes and combs, while the easel 
and the few sketches of Italian scenes and figures 
occupied the foregi'ound. I did not like his pictures 
very well, but would gladly have bought them all if I 
could have afforded it, the artist looked so cheerful, 
patient, and quiet, doubtless amidst huge discom'age- 
ment. He is probably stubborn of purpose, and is 
the sort of man who will improve with every year of 
his life. We could not speak his language, and were 
therefore spared the difficulty of paying him any com- 
pliments ; but Miss Shepard said a few kind words to 
him in German, and seemed quite to win his heart, 
insomuch that he followed her with bows and smiles a 
long way down the staircase. It is a terrible business, 
this looking at pictures, whether good or bad, in the 
presence of the artists who paint them ; it is as great 
a bore as to hear a poet read his own verses. It takes 
away all my pleasure in seeing the pictures, and even 
makes me question the genuineness of the impressions 
which I receive from them. 

After this latter visit Mr. Akers conducted us to 
the shop of the jeweller Castellani, who is a great 
reproducer of ornaments in the old Roman and Etrus- 
can fashion. These antique styles are very fashion- 
able just now, and some of the specimens he showed 
us were certainly very beautiful, though I doubt 
whether their quaintness and old-time curiousness, as 
patterns of gewgaws dug out of immemorial tombs, be 
not their greatest charm. We saw the toilet-case of 
an Etruscan lady, — that is to say, a modern imitation 
of it, — with her rings for summer and winter, and for 



1858.] ITALY. - 191 

every day of the week, and for thumb and fingers ; her 
ivory comb ; her bracelets ; and more knick-knacks 
than I can half remember. Splendid things of our 
own time were likewise shown us ; a necklace of dia- 
monds worth eighteen thousand scudi, together with 
emeralds and opals and great pearls. Finally we 
came away, and my wife and Miss Shepard were taken 
up by the Misses Weston, who drove with them to 
visit the Villa Albani. During their drive my wife 
happened to raise her arm, and Miss Shepard espied a 
little Greek cross of gold which had attached itself to 
the lace of her sleeve Pray heaven the jewel- 
ler may not discover his loss before we have time to 
restore the spoil ! He is apparently so free and care- 
less in displaying his precious wares, — putting inesti- 
mable gems and brooches great and small into the 
hands of strangers like ourselves, and leaving scores of 
them strewn on the top of his counter, — that it would 
seem easy enough to take a diamond or two ; but I 
suspect there must needs be a sharp eye somewhere. 
Before we left the shop he requested me to honor him 
with my autograph in a large book that was fall of 
the names of his visitors. This is probably a measure 
of precaution. 

A2J7nl 30th. — I went yesterday to the sculpture- 
gallery of the Capitol, and looked pretty thoroughly 
through the busts of the illustrious men, and less par- 
ticularly at those of the emperors and their relatives. 
I likewise took particular note of the Faun of Praxi- 
teles, because the idea keeps recurring to me of writ- 
ing a little romance about it, and for that reason I 



J92 FKENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

shall endeavor to set down a somewhat minutely item- 
ized detail of the statue and its surroundings. . . . ; 

We have had beautiful weather for two oi' three 
days, very warm in the sun, yet always freshened by 
the gentle life of a breeze, and quite cool enough the 

moment you pass within the limit of the shade 

In the morning there are few people there (on the 
Pincian) except the gardeners, lazily trimming the 
borders, or filling their watering-pots out of the mar- 
ble-brimmed basin of the fountain ; French soldiers, 
in their long mixed-blue surtouts, and wide scarlet 
pantaloons, chatting with here and there a nursery- 
maid and playing with the child in her care ; and 
perhaps a few smokers, .... choosing each a marble 
seat or wooden bench in sunshine or shade as best 
suits him. In the afternoon, especially within an 
hour or two of sunset, the gardens are much more 
populous, and the seats, except when the sun falls 
full upon them, are hard to come by. Ladies arrive 
in carriages, splendidly dressed ; children are abun- 
dant, much impeded in their frolics, and rendered stiff 
and stately by the finery which they wear; English 
gentlemen, and Americans with their wives and fami- 
lies ; the flower of the Roman population, too, both 
^ale and female, mostly dressed with great nicety ; 
liilt a large intermixture of artists, shabbily pictu- 
resquie ; and other persons, not of the first stamp. A 
French band, comprising a great many brass instru- 
ments, by and by begins to play ; and what with 
"iiiu-sic, sunshine, a delightful atmosphere, flowers, 
^gfttss, %ell-kept pathways, bordered with box-hedges, 



1858.] ITALY. 19!3 

pines, cypresses, horse-chestnuts, flowering shrubs, and 
all manner of cultivated beauty, the scene is a very 
lively and agreeable one. The fine equipages that 
drive round and round through the carriage-paths are 
another noticeable item. The Roman aristocracy are 
magnificent in their aspect, driving abroad with beau- 
tiful horses, and footmen in rich liveries, sometimes as 
many as three behind and one sitting by the coach- 
man. 

May \st. — This morning, I wandered for the thou- 
sandth time through some of the narrow intricacies of 
Rome, stepping here and there into a church. I do 
not know the name of the first one, nor had it any- 
thing that in Rome could be called remarkable, though, 
till I came here, I was not aware that any such 
churches existed, — a marble pavement in variegated 
compartments, a series of shrines and chapels round 
the whole floor, each with its own adornment of sculp- 
ture and pictures, its own altar with tall wax tapers 
before it, some of which were burning ; a great picture 
over the high altar, the whole interior of the church 
fanged round with pillars and pilasters, and lined, 
every inch of it, with rich yellow marble. Finally, a 
frescoed ceiling over the nave and transepts, and a 
dome rising high above the central part, and filled 
with frescos brought to such perspective illusion, that 
the edges seem to project into the air. Two or three 
persons are kneeling at separate shrines ; there are 
several wooden confessionals placed against the walls, 
at one of which kneels a lady, confessing to a priest 
who sits within ; the tapers are lighted at the high 



194 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

altar and at one of the shrines ; an attendant is scrub- 
bing the marble pavement with a broom and water, — 
a process, I should think, seldom practised in Roman 
churches. By and by the lady finishes her confession, 
kisses the priest's hand, and sits down in one of the 
chairs which are placed about the floor, while the 
priest, in a black robe, with a short, white, loose jacket 
over bis shoulders, disappears by a side door out of 
the church. I, likewise, finding nothing attractive in 
the pictures, take my departure. Protestantism needs a 

new fl,postle to convert it into something positive 

I now found my way to the Piazza Navona. It is 
to me the most interesting piazza in Rome ; a large 
oblong space, surrounded with tall, shabby houses, 
among which there are none that seem to be palaces. 
The sun falls broadly over the area of the piazza, and 
shows the fountains in it ; — one, a large basin with 
great sea-monsters, probably of Bernini's inventions, 
squirting very small streams of water into it ; another 
of the fountains I do not at all remember; but the 
central one is an immense basin, over which is reared 
an old Egyptian obelisk, elevated on a rock, which is 
cleft into four arches. Monstrous devices in marble, 
I know not of what purport, are clambering about 
the cloven rock or burrowing beneath it ; one and all 
of them are supei-fluous and impertinent, the only 
essential thing being the abundant supply of water in 
the fountain. This whole Piazza Navona is usually 
the scene of more business than seems to be trans- 
acted anywhere else in Rome ; in some parts of it 
rusty iron is offered for sale, locks and keys, old 



1858,] ITALY. 195 

tools, and all such rubbish ; in other parts vegetables, 
comprising, at this season, green peas, onions, cauli- 
flowers, radishes, artichokes, and others with which I 
have never made acquaintance ; also, stalls or wheel- 
barrows containing apples, chestnuts (the meats dried 
and taken out of the shells), green almonds in their 
husks, and squash seeds, — salted and dried in an 
oven, — apparently a favorite delicacy of the Romans. 
There are also lemons and oranges; stalls of fish, 
mostly about the size of smelts, taken from the Tiber ; 
cigars of various qualities, the best at a baioccho and 
a half apiece ; bread in loaves or in small rings, a 
great many of which are strung together on a long 
stick, and thus carried round for sale. Women and 
men sit with these things for sale, or carry them 
about in trays or on boards on their heads, crying 
them with shrill and hard voices. There is a shabby 
crowd and much babble ; very little picturesqueness of 
costume or figure, however, the chief exceptions being, 
here and there, an old white-bearded beggar. A few 
of the men have the peasant costume, — a short jacket 
and breeches of light blue cloth and white stockings, 
— the ugliest dress I ever saw. The women go bare- 
headed, and seem fond of scarlet and other bright 
colors, but are homely and clumsy in form. The 
piazza is dingy in its general aspect, and very dirty, 
being strewn with straw, vegetable-tops, and the rub- 
bish of a week's marketing ; but there is more life in 
it than one sees elsewhere in Rome. 

On one side of the piazza is the Church of St. 
Agnes, traditionally said to stand on the site of the 



196 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

house where that holy maiden was exposed to infamy 
by the Roman soldiers, and where her modesty and 
innocence were saved by miracle. I went into the 
church, and found it very splendid, with rich marble 
columns, all as brilliant as if just built ; a frescoed 
dome above ; beneath, a range of chapels all round 
the church, ornamented not with pictures but bas- 
reliefs, the figures of which almost step and struggle 
out of the marble. They did not seem very admirable 
as works of art, none of them explaining themselves 
or attracting me long enough to study -out their 
meaning ; but, as part of the architecture of the 
church, they had a good effect. Out of the busy 
square two or three persons had stepped into this 
bright and calm seclusion to pray and be devout for 
a little while ; and, between sunrise and sunset of 
the bustling market-day, many doubtless snatch a 
moment to refresh their souls. 

In the Pantheon (to-day) it was pleasant looking 
up to the circular opening, to see the clouds flitting 
across it, sometimes covering it quite over, then per- 
mitting a glimpse of sky, then showing all the circle 
of sunny blue. Then would come the ragged edge of 
a cloud, brightened throughout with sunshine, pass- 
ing and changing quickly, — not that the divine smile 
was not always the same, but continually variable 
through the medium of earthly influences. The great 
slanting beam of sunshine was visible all the way 
down to the pavement, falling upon motes of dust, or 
a thin smoke of incense imperceptible in the shadow. 
•Insects were playing to and fro in the beam, high up 



1858.] ITALY. 197 

toward the opening. There is a wonderful charm in 
the naturalness of all this, and one might fancy a 
swarm of cherubs coming down through the opening 
and sporting in the broad ray, to gladden the faith of 
worshippers on the pavement beneath ; or angels 
bearing prayers upward, or bringing down responses 
to them, visible with dim brightness as they pass 
through the pathway of heaven's radiance, even the 
many hues of their wings discernible by a trusting 
eye ; though, as they pass into the shadow, they van- 
ish like the motes. So the sunbeam would represent 
those rays of divine intelligence which enable us to 
see wonders and to know that they are natural things. 

Consider the effect of light and shade in a church 
where the windows are open and darkened with cur- 
tains that are occasionally lifted by a breeze, letting in 
the sunshine, which whitens a carved tombstone on 
the pavement of the church, disclosing, perhaps, the 
letters of the name and inscription, a death's head, a 
crosier, or other emblem ; then the curtain falls and 
the bright spot vanishes. 

May ^th. — This morning my wife and I went to 
breakfast with Mrs. William Story at the Barberini 
Palace, expecting to meet Mrs. Jameson, who has been 
in Rome for a month or two. We had a very pleasant 
breakfast, but Mrs. Jameson was not present on 
account of indisposition, and the only other guests 
Jrere Mrs. A — - — - and Mrs. H , two sensible Amer- 
ican ladies. Mrs. Story, however, received a note 
from Mrs. Jameson, asking her to bring us to see her 
p,t her lodginjgs ; so in the course <?f the afternoon she 



198 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

called for us, and took us thither in her carriage. 
Mrs. Jameson lives on the first piano of an old piazzo 
on the Via di Ripetta, nearly opposite the ferry-way 
across the Tiber, and affording a pleasant view of the 
yellow river and the green bank and fields on the 
other side. I had expected to see an elderly lady, 
but not quite so venerable a one as Mrs. Jameson 
proved to be ; a rather short, round, and massive 
personage, of benign and agreeable aspect, with a sort 
of black skullcap on her head, beneath which appeared 
her hair, which seemed once to have been fair, and 
was now almost white. I should take her to be about 
seventy years old. She began to talk to us with 
affectionate familiarity, and was particularly kind in 
her manifestations towards myself, who, on my part, 
was equally gracious towards her. In truth, I have 
found great pleasure and profit in her works, and was 
glad to hear her say that she liked mine. We talked 
about art, and she showed us a picture leaning up 
against the wall of the room ; a quaint old Byzantine 
painting, with a gilded background, and two stiff 
figures (our Saviour and St. Cathierine) standing shyly 
at a sacred distance from one another, and going 
through the marriage ceremony. There was a great 
deal of expression in their faces and figures ; and the 
spectator feels, moreover, that the artist must have 
been a devout man, — an impression which we seldom 
receive from modern pictures, however awfully holy 
the subject, or however consecrated the place they 
hang in. Mrs. Jameson seems to be familiar with 
Italy, its people and life, as well as with its picture- 



1858.] ITALY. 199 

galleries. She is said to be rather irascible in her 
temper ; but nothing could be sweeter than her voice, 
her look, and all her manifestations to-day. When 
we were coming away she clasped my hand in both 
of hers, and again expressed the pleasure of having 
seen me, and her gratitude to me for calling on her ; 
nor did I refrain from responding Amen to these 
effusions 

Taking leave of Mrs. Jameson, we drove through 
the city, and out of the Lateran Gate ; first, however, 
waiting a long while at Monaldini's bookstore in the 
Piazza di Spagna for Mr. Story, whom we finally took 
up in the street, after losing nearly an hour. 

Just two miles beyond the gate is a space on the 
green campagna where, for some time past, excava- 
tions have been in progress, which thus far have 
resulted in the discovery of several tombs, and the 
old, buried, and almost forgotten church or basilica 
of San Stefano. It is a beautiful spot, that of the 
excavations, with the Alban hills in the distance, and 
some heavy, sunlighted clouds hanging above, or 
recumbent at length upon them, and behind the city 
and its mighty dome. The excavations are an object 
of great interest both to the Romans and to strangers, 
and there were many carriages and a great many 
visitors viewing the progress of the works, which are 
carried forward with greater energy than anything 
else I have seen attempted at Rome. A short time 
ago the ground in the vicinity was a green surface, 
level, except here and there a little hillock, or scarcely 
perceptible swell ; the tomb of Cecelia Metella showing 



200 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

itself a. mile or two distant, and other rugged ruins of 
great tombs rising on the plain, ^ow the whole site 
of the basilica is uncovered, and they have dug into 
the depths of several tombs, bringing to light precious 
marbles, pillars, a statue, and elaborately wrought 
sarcophagi ; and if they were to dig into almost every 
other inequality that frets the surface of . the cam- 
pagna, I suppose the result might be the same. You 
cannot dig six feet downward anywhere into the soil, 
deep enough to hollow out a grave, without finding 
some precious relic of the past ; only they lose some- 
what of their value when you think that you can 
almost spurn them out of the ground with your foot. 
It is a very wonderful arrangement of Providence that 
these things should have been preserved for a long 
series of coming generations by that accumulation of 
dust and soil and grass and trees and houses over 
them, which will keep them safe, and cause their 
reappearance above ground to be gradual, so that the 
rest of the world's lifetime may have for one of its 
enjoyments the uncovering of old Rome. 

The tombs were accessible by long flights of steps, 
going steeply downward, and they were thronged 
with so many visitors that we had to wait some little 
time for our own turn. In the first into which we 
descended we found two tombs side by side, with only 
a partition wall between; the outer tomb being, as 
is supposed, a burial-place constructed by the early 
Christians, while the adjoined and minor one was a 
work of pagan Rome about the second century after 
Christ. The former was much less interesting than 



1868.] ITALY. 201 

the latter. It contained some large sarcophagi, with 
sculpture upon them of rather heathenish aspect ; and 
in the centre of the front of each sarcophagus was a 
bust in bas-relief, the features of which had never 
been wrought, but were left almost blank, with only 
the faintest indications of a nose, for instance. It is 
supposed that sarcophagi were kept on hand by the 
sculptors, and were bought ready made, and that it 
was customary to work out the portrait of the de- 
ceased upon the blank face in the centre ; but when 
there was a necessity for sudden burial, as may have 
been the case in the present instance, this was dis- 
pensed with. 

The inner tomb was found without any earth in it, 
just as it had been left when the last old Roman was 
buried there ; and it being only a week or two since 
it was opened, there was very little intervention of 
persons, though much of time, between the departure 
of the friends of the dead and our own visit. It is 
a square room, with a mosaic pavement, and is six or 
seven paces in length and breadth, and as much in 
height to the vaulted roof. The roof and upper waUs 
are beautifully ornamented with frescos, which were 
very bright when first discovered, but have rapidly- 
faded since the admission of the air, though the 
graceful and joyous designs, flowers and fruits and 
trees, are still perfectly discernible. The room must 
have been anything but sad and funereal ; on the 
contrary, as cheerful a saloon, and as brilliant, if 
lighted up, as one could desire to feast in. It con- 
tained several marble sarcophagi, covering indeed 
9* 



J202 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

almost tHe whole floor, and each of them as much as 
three or four feet in length, and two much longer. 
The longer ones I did not particularly examine, and 
they seemed comparatively plainer ; but the smaller 
sarcophagi were covered with the most delicately 
wrought and beautiful bas-reliefs that I ever beheld ; 
a throng of glad and lovely shapes in marble cluster- 
ing thickly and chasing one another round the sides 
of these old stone cofl&ns. The work was as perfect 
as when the scidptor gave it his last touch ; and if he 
had wrought it to be placed in a frequented hall, to 
be seen and admired by continual crowds as long as 
the marble should endure, he could not have chiselled 
with better skill and care, though his work was to be 
shut up in the depths of a tomb forever. This seems 
to me the strangest thing in the world, the most alien 
from modern sympathies. If they had built their 
tombs above ground, one could understand the ar- 
rangement better ; but no sooner had they adorned 
them so richly, and furnished them with such ex- 
quisite productions of art, than they annihilated them 
with darkness. It was an attempt, no doubt, to 
render the physical aspect of death cheerful, but 
there was no good sense in it. 

We went down also into another tomb close by, 
the walls of which were ornamented with medallions 
in stucco. These works presented a numerous series 
of graceful designs, wrought by the hand in the short 
space (Mr. Story said it could not have been more 
than five or ten minutes) while the wet plaster re- 
mained capable of being moulded ; and it was mar- 



1858.] ITALY. 203 

velloiis to think of the fertility of the artist's fancy, 
and the rapidity and accuracy with which he must 
have given substantial existence to his ideas. These 
too — all of them such adornments as would have 
suited a festal hall — were made to be buried forth- 
with in eternal darkness. I saw and handled in this 
tomb a great thigh-bone, and measured it with my 
own; it was one of many such relics of the guests 
who were laid to sleep in these rich chambers. The 
sarcophagi that served them for coffins could not now 
be put to a more appropriate use than as wine-coolers 
in a modern dining-room ; and it would heighten the 
enjoyment of a festival to look at them. 

We would gladly have stayed much longer; but it 
^as drawing towards sunset, and the evening, though 
bright, was unusually cool, so we drove home ; and 
on the way, Mr. Story told us of the horrible prac- 
tices of the modern Romans with their dead, — how 
they place them in the church, where, at midnight, 
they are stripped of their last rag of funeral attire, 
put into the rudest wooden coffins, and thrown into a 
trench, — a half-mile, for instance, of promiscuous 
corpses. This is the fate of all, except those whose 
friends choose to pay an exorbitant sum to have them 
buried under the pavement of a church. The Italians 
have an excessive dread of corpses, and never meddle 
with those of their nearest and dearest relatives. 
They have a horror of death, too, especially of sudden 
death, and most particularly of apoplexy; and no 
wonder, as it gives no time for the last rites of the 
Church, and so exposes them to a fearful risk of per- 



^04 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1658. 

ditio^ forever. On the whole, the ancient practice 
was, perhaps, the preferable one; but Nature has 
made it very difficult for us to do anything pleasant 
and satisfactory with a dead body. God knows best ; 
but I wish he had so ordered it that our mortal 
bodies, when we have done with them, might vanish 
out of ^ight and sense, like bubbles. A person of 
delicacy hate? tp think of leaving such a burden afJ 
his decaying mortality to the disposal of his friends ; 
but, I say again, how delightful it would be, and how 
jbelpful towards our faith in a blessed futurity, if the 
dying could disappear like vanishing bubbles, leaving, 
perhaps, a sweet fragrance diffused for a minute or 
two throughout the death-chamber. This would be 
the odor of sanctity ! And if sometimes the evap- 
oration of a sinful soul should leave an odor not so 
delightful, a breeze through the open windows would 
soon waft it quite away. 

Apropos of the various methods of disposing of 
dead bodies, William Story recalled a newspaper 
paragraph respecting a ring, with a stone of a new 
species in it, which a widower was observed to wear 
upon his finger. Being questioned as to what the 
gem was, he answered, " It is my wife." He had 
procured her body to be chemically resolved into this 
stone. I think I could make a story on this idea : 
the ring should be one of the widower's bridal gifts 
to a second wife ; and, of course, it should have 
wondrous and terrible qualities, symbolizing all that 
disturbs the quiet of a second marriage, — on the 
husband's part, remorse for his inconstancy, and the 



1858.] ITALY. "2% 

constant comparison between the dead wife of bis 
youth, now idealized, and the grosser reality which 
he had now adopted into her place ; while on the 
new wife's finger it should give pressures, shooting 
pangs into her heart, jealousies of the past, and all 
such miserable emotions. 

By the by, the tombs which we looked at and 
entered may have been originally above ground, 
like that of Cecilia Metella, and a hundred othei^ 
Along the Appian Way ; though, even in this case, 
the beautiful chambers must have been shut up in 
darkness. Had there been windows, letting in the 
light upon the rich frescos and exquisite sculptures, 
there would have been a satisfaction in thinking of 
the existence of so much visual beauty, though no 
eye had the privilege to see it. But darkness, to 
objects of sight, is annihilation, as long as the dark- 
ness lasts. 

May 9^A. — Mrs. Jameson called this forenoon to 
ask us to go and see her this evening ; . . . . so that 
I had to receive her alone, devolving part of the 
burd^i on Miss Shepard and the three children, all 
of whom I introduoed to her notice. Finding that I 
had not been farther beyond the walls of Rome than 
the tomb of Cecilia Metella, she invited me to take a 

drive of a few miles with her this afternoon 

The poor lady seems to be very lame ; and I am sure 
I was grateful to her for having taken the trouble to 
climb up the seventy steps of our staircase, and felt 
pain at seeing her go down them again. It looks fear- 
fully like the gout, the affection being apparently in 



206 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l85S. 

one foot. The hands, by the way, are white, and must 
once have been, perhaps now are, beautiful. She 
must have been a perfectly pretty woman in her day, 
— a blue or gray eyed, fair-haired beauty. I think 
that her hair is not white, but only flaxen in the 
extreme. 

At half past four, according to appointment, I 
arrived at her lodgings, and had not long to wait 
before her little one-horse carriage drove up to the 
door, and we set out, rumbling along the Via Scrofa, 
and through the densest part of the city, past the 
theatre of Marcellus, and thence along beneath the 
Palatine Hill, and by the Baths of Caracalla, through 
the gate of San Sebastiano. After emerging from 
the gate, we soon came to the little Church of 
" Domine, quo vadis 1 " Standing on the spot where 
St. Peter is said to have seen a vision of our Saviour 
bearing his cross, Mrs. Jameson proposed to alight ; 
and, going in, we saw a cast from Michael Angelo's 
statue of the Saviour ; and not far from the threshold 
of the church, yet perhaps in the centre of the 
edifice, which is extremely small, a circular stone is 
placed, a little raised above the pavement, and sur- 
rounded by a low wooden railing. Pointing to this 
stone, Mrs. Jameson showed me the prints of two 
feet side by side, impressed into its surface, as if a 
person had stopped short while pursuing his way to 
Eome. These, she informed me, were supposed to 
be the miraculous prints of the Saviour's feet ; but on 
looking into Murray, I am mortified to find that they 
are merely facsimiles of the original impressions, 



1858.] ITALY. 207 

which are treasured up among the relics of the 
neighboring Basihca of San Sebastiano. The marks 
of sculpture seemed to me, indeed, very evident in 
these prints, nor did they indicate such beautiful feet 
as should have belonged to the bearer of the best of 
glad tidings. 

Hence we drove on a little way farther, and came to 
the Basilica of San Sebastiano, where also w^e alighted, 
and, leaning on my arm, Mrs. Jameson went in. It is 
a stately and noble interior, with a spacious unen- 
cumbered nave, and a flat ceiling frescoed and gilded. 
In a chapel at the left of the entrance is the tomb of 
St. Sebastian, — a sarcophagus containing his remains, 
raised on high before the altar, and beneath it a re- 
cumbent statue of the saint pierced with gilded ar- 
rows. The sculpture is of the school of Bernini, — 
done after the design of Bernini himself, Mrs. Jame- 
son said, and is more agreeable and in better taste 
than most of his works. We walked round the basil- 
ica, glancing at the pictures in the various chapels, 
none of which seemed to be of remarkable merit, 
although Mrs. Jameson jjronounced rather a favor- 
able verdict on one of St. Francis. She says that 
she can read a picture like the page of a book; in 
fact, without perhaps assuming more taste and judg- 
ment than really belong to her, it was impossible not 
to perceive that she gave her companion no credit 
for knowing one single simplest thing about art. Nor, 
on the whole, do I think she underrated me ; the only 
mystery is, how she came to be so well aware of my 
ignorance on artistical points. 



208 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

In the basilica the Franciscan monks were ar- 
ranging benches on the floor of the nave, and some 
peasant children and grown people besides were as- 
sembling, probably to undergo an examination in the 
catechism, and we hastened to depart, lest our pres- 
ence should interfere with their arrangements. At 
the door a monk met us, and asked for a contribution 
jn aid of his church, or some other religious purpose. 
Boys, as we drove on, ran stoutly along by the side of 
the chaise, begging as often as they could find breathy 
but were constrained finally to give up the pursuit, 
The great ragged bulks of the tombs along the Appian 
Way now hove in sight, one with a farm-house on its 
summit, and all of them preposterously huge and 
massive. At a distance, across the green campagna 
on our left, the Claudian aqueduct strode away over 
miles of space, and doubtless reached even to that 
circumference of blue hills which stand afar off, gird- 
ling Rome about. The tomb of Cecilia Metella came 
in sight a long while before we reached it, with the 
warm buff hue of its travertine, and the gray battle- 
mented wall which the Gaetenis erected on the top of 
its circular summit six hundred years ago. After 
passing it, we saw an interminable line of tombs on 
both sides of the way, each of which might, for aught 
I know, have been as massive as that of Cecilia Me- 
tella, and some perhaps still more monstrously gigan- 
tic, though now dilapidated and much reduced in size. 
Mrs. Jameson had an engagement to dinner at half 
past six, so that we could go but a little farther along 
this most interesting road, the borders of which are 



1858.] ITALY. 209 

strewn with broken marbles, fragments of capitals, 
and nameless rubbish that once was beautiful. Me- 
thinks the Appian Way should be the only entrance 
to Rome, — through an avenue of tombs. 

The day had been cloudy, chill, and windy, but 
was now grown calmer and more genial, and bright- 
ened by a very pleasant sunshine, though great dark 
clouds were still lumbering up the sky. We drove 
homeward, looking at the distant dome of St. Peter's, 
and talking of many things, — painting, sculpture, 
America, England, spiritualism, and whatever else 
came up. She is a very sensible old lady, and sees a 
great deal of truth; a good woman, too, taking ele- 
vated views of matters ; but I doubt whether she has 
the highest and finest perceptions in the world. At 
any rate, she pronounced a good judgment on the 
American sculptors now in Rome, condemning them 
in the mass as men with no high aims, no worthy 
conception of the purposes of their art, and desecrat- 
ing marble by the things they wrought in it. William 
Story, I presume, is not to be included in this censure, 
as she had spoken highly of his sculpturesque faculty 
in our previous conversation. On my part, I sug- 
gested that the English sculptors were little or noth- 
ing better than our own, to which she acceded gener- 
ally, but said that Gibson had produced works equal 
to the antique, —- which I did not dispute, but still 
questioned whether the world needed Gibson, or was 
any the better for him. We had a great dispute 
«,bout the propriety of adopting the costume of the 
iay in modem sculpture, and I contended that eith^ 



210 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

the art ought to be given up (which possibly would 
be the best course), or else should be used for ideal- 
izing the man of the day to himself ; and that, as Na- 
ture makes us sensible of the fact when men and 
women are graceful, beautiful, and noble, through 
whatever costume they wear, so it ought to be the 
test of the sculptor's genius that he should do the 
same. Mrs. Jameson decidedly objected to buttons, 
breeches, and all other items of modem costume; 
and, indeed, they do degrade the marble, and make 
high sculpture utterly impossible. Then let the art 
perish as one that the world has done with, as it has 
done with many other beautiful things that belonged 
to an earlier time. 

It was long past the hour of Mrs. Jameson's dinner 
engagement when we drove up to her door in the Via 
Ripetta. I bade her farewell with much good-feeling 
on my own side, and, I hope, on hers, excusing myself, 
however, from keeping the previous engagement to 
spend the evening with her, for, in point of fact, we 
had mutually had enough of one another for the time 
iDeing. I am glad to record that she expressed a very 
favorable opinion of our friend Mr. Thompson's pic- 
tures. 

May \Wi. — To-day we have been to the Villa 
Albani, to which we had a ticket of admission through 
the agency of Mr. Cass (the American Minister). We 
set out between ten and eleven o'clock, and walked 
through the Via Felice, the Piazza Barberini, and a 
long, heavy, dusty range of streets beyond, to the 
Porta Salara, whence the road extends, white and 



1858.] ITALY. 211 

Bunny, between two high blank walls to the gate of 
the villa, which is at no great distance. We were 
admitted by a girl, and went first to the casino, along 
an aisle of overshadowing trees, the branches of which 
met above our heads. In the portico of the casino, 
which extends along its whole front, there are many 
busts and statues, and, among them, one of Julius 
Caesar, representing him at an earlier period of life 
than others which I have seen. His aspect is not 
particularly impressive ; there is a lack of chin, 
though not so much as in the older statues and busts. 
AVithin the edifice there is a large hall, not so brilliant, 
perhaps, with frescos and gilding as those at the Villa 
Borghese, but lined with the most beautiful variety of 
marbles. But, in fact, each new splendor of this sort 
outshines the last, and unless we could pass from one 
to another all in the same suite, we cannot remember 
them well enough to compare the Borghese with the 
Albani, the effect being more on the fancy than on the 
intellect. I do not recall any of the sculpture, except 
a colossal bas-relief of Antinoiis, crowned with flowers, 
and holding flowers in his hand, which was found in 
the ruins of Hadrian's Villa. This is said to be the 
finest relic of antiquity next to the Apollo and the 
Laocoon ; but I could not feel it to be so, partly, I 
suppose, because the features of Antinoiis do not seem 
to me beautiful in themselves ; and that heavy, down- 
ward look is repeated till I am more weary of it than 
of anything else in sculpture. We went up stairs and 
down stairs, and saw a good many beautiful things, 
but none, perhaps, of the very best and beautifullest ; 



212 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [185& 

and second-rate statues, with the corroded surface of 
old marble that has been dozens of centuries under 
the ground, depress the spirits of the beholder. The 
bas-relief of Antinoiis has at least the merit of being 
almost as white and fresh, and quite as smooth, as if 
it had never been buried and dug up again. The real 
treasures of this villa, to the number of nearly three 
hundred, were removed to Paris by Napoleon, and, 
except the Antinoiis, not one of them ever came back. 

There are some pictures in one or two of the rooms, 
and among them I recollect one by Perugino, in which 
is a St. Michael, very devout and very beautiful; 
indeed, the whole picture (which is in compartments, 
representing the three principal points of the Saviour's 
history) impresses the beholder as being painted 
devoutly and earnestly by a religious man. In one of 
the rooms there is a small bronze Apollo, supposed by 
Winckelmann to be an original of Praxiteles; but I 
could not make myself in the least sensible of its 
inerit. 

The rest of the things in the casino I shall pass 
over, as also those in the coffee-house, — • an edifice which 
Stands a hundred yards or more from the casino, with 
an ornamental garden, laid out in walks and flower- 
plats between. The coffee-house has a semicircular 
sweep of porch with a good many statues and busts 
beneath it, chiefly of distinguished Romans. In this 
building, as in the casino, there are curious mosaics, 
large vases of rare marble, and many other things 
worth long pauses of admiration ; but I think that we 
were all happier when we had done with the works of 



1858.] 'TALY. 213 

art, and were at leisure to ramble about the grounds. 
The Villa Abani itself is an edifice separate from both 
the coffee-house and casino, and is not opened to 
strangers. It rises, palace-like, in the midst of the 
garden, and, it is to be hoped, has some possibility 
of comfort amidst its splendors. Comfort, however, 
would be thrown away upon it ; for besides that the 
site shares the curse that has fallen upon every pleas- 
ant place in the vicinity of Rome, .... it really has 
no occupant except the servants who take care of it. 
The Count of Castelbarco, its present proprietor, resides 
at Milan. The grounds are laid out in the old fashion 
of straight paths, with borders of box, which form 
hedges of great height and density, and as even as a 
brick-wall at the top and sides. There are also alleys 
forming long vistas between the trunks and beneath 
the boughs of oaks, ilexes, and olives ; and there are 
shrubberies and tangled wildernesses of palm, cactus, 
rhododendron, and I know not what ; and a profusion 
of roses that bloom and wither with nobody to pluck 
fend few to look at them. They climb about the 
sculpture of fountains, rear themselves against pillars 
and porticos, run brimming over the walls, and strew 
the paths with their falling leaves. We stole a few, 
and feel that we have wronged our consciences in not 
stealing more. In one part of the grounds we saw a 
field actually ablaze with scarlet poppies. There are 
great lagunas ; fountains presided over by naiads, who 
squirt their little jets into basins ; sunny lawns ; a 
temple, so artificially ruined that we half believed it 
a veritable antique ; and at its base a reservoir of 



2U FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

water, in which stone swans seemed positively to float ; 
groves of cypress; bahistrades and broad flights of 
stone stairs, descending to lower levels of the garden ; 
beauty, peace, sunshine, and antique repose on every 
side ; and far in the distance the blue hills that encir- 
cle the campagna of Rome. The day was very fine 
for our purpose ; cheerful, but not too bright, and 
tempered by a breeze that seemed even a little too cool 
when we sat long in the shade. We enjoyed it till 
three o'clock 

At the Capitol there is a sarcophagus with a most 
beautiful bas-relief of the discovery of Achilles by 
Ulysses, in which there is even an expression of 
mirth on the faces of many of the spectators. And 
to-day at the Albani a sarcophagus was ornamented 
with the nuptials of Peleus and Thetis. 

Death strides behind every man, to be sure, at 
more or less distance, and, sooner or later, enters 
upon any event of his life ; so that, in this point of 
view, they might each and all serve for bas-reliefs on 
n sarcophagus ; but the Romans seem to have treated 
Death as lightly and playfully as they could, and tried 
to cover his dart with flowers, because they hated it 
so much. 

May \^ik. — My wife and I went yesterday to the 
Sistine Chapel, it being my first visit. It is a room 
of noble proportions, lofty and long, though divided 
in the midst by a screen or partition of white marble, 
which rises high enough to break the effect of spacious 
unity. There are six arched windows on each side of 
the chapel, throwing down their light from the height 



185&] ITALY. 215 

of the walls, with as much as twenty feet of space 
(more I should think) between them and the floor. 
The entire walls and ceiling of this stately chapel are 
covered with paintings in fresco, except the space 
about ten feet in height from the floor, and that 
portion was intended to be adorned by tapestries from 
pictures by Raphael, but, the design being prevented 
by his immature death, the projected tapestries have 
no better substitute than paper-hangings. The roof, 
which is flat at top, and coved or vaulted at the sides, 
is painted in compartments by Michael Angelo, with 
frescos representing the whole progress of the world 
and of mankind from its first formation by the Al- 
mighty .... till after the flood. On one of the 
sides of the chapel are pictures by Perugino, and 
other old masters, of subsequent events in sacred 
histoiy j and the entire wall behind the altar, a vast 
expanse from the ceiling to the floor, is taken up with 
Michael Angelo's summing up of the world's history 
and destinies in his "Last Judgment." 

There can be no doubt that while these frescos 
continued in their perfection, there was nothing else 
to be compared with the magnificent and solemn 
beauty of this chapel. Enough of ruined splendor 
still remains to convince the spectator of all that has 
departed ; but methinks I have seen hardly anything 
else so forlorn and depressing as it is now, all dusky 
and dim, even the very lights having passed into 
shadows, and the shadows into utter blackness ; so 
that it needs a sunshiny day, under the bright Italian 
heavens, to make the designs perceptible at all. As 



216' FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

we sat in the chapel there were clouds flitting across 
the sky ; when the clouds came the pictures vanished ; 
when the sunshine broke forth the figures sadly glim- 
mered into something like visibility, — the Almighty 
moving in chaos, — the noble shape of Adam, the 
beautiful Eve ; and, beneath where the roof curves, 
the mighty figures of sibyls and prophets, looking as 
if they were nec€ssarily so gigantic because the 
thought within them was so massive. In the " Last 
Judgment " the scene of the greater part of the picture 
lies in the upper sky, the blue of which glows through 
betwixt the groups of naked figures; and above sits 
Jesus, not looking in the least like the Saviour of the 
world, but, with uplifted arm, denouncing eternal 
misery on those whom he came to save. I fear I am 
myself among the wicked, for I found myself inevita- 
bly taking their part, and asking for at least a little 
pity, some few regrets, and not such a stern denunci- 
atory spirit on the part of Him who had thought us 
worth dying for. Around him stand grim saints, and, 
far beneath, people are getting up sleepily out of their 
graves, not well knowing what is about to happen; 
many of them, however, finding themselves clutched 
by demons before they are half awake. It would be 
a very terrible picture to one who should really see 
Jesus, the Saviour, in that inexorable judge ; but it 
seems to me very undesirable that he should ever be 
represented in that aspect, when it is so essential to 
our religion to believe him infinitely kinder and better 
towards us than we deserve. At the last day — I 
presume, that is, in all future days, when we see our- 



1858.] ITALY. 217 

selves as we are — man's only inexorable judge will 
be himself, and the punishment of his sins will be the 
perception of them. 

In the lower corner of this grep.t picture, at the 
right hand of the spectator, is a hxdeous figure of a 
damned person, girdled about with a serpent, the 
folds of which are carefully knotted between his 
thighs, so as, at all events, to give no offence to 
decency. This figure represents a man who suggested 
to Pope Paul III. that the nudities of the "Last 
Judgment " ought to be draped, for which offence 
Michael Angelo at once consigned him to hell. It 
shows what a debtor's prison and dungeon of private 
torment men would make of hell if they had the 
control of it. As to the nudities, if they were ever 
more nude than now, I should suppose, in their fresh 
brilliancy, they might well have startled a not very 
squeamish eye. The effect, such as it is, of this 
picture, is much injured by the high altar and its 
canopy, which stands close against the wall, and 
intercepts a considerable portion of the sprawl of 
nakedness with which Michael Angelo has filled his 
sky. However, I am not unwilling to believe, with 
faith beyond what I can actually see, that the greatest 
pictorial miracles ever yet achieved have been wrought 
upon the walls and ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. 

In the afternoon I went with Mr. Thompson to see 
what bargain could be made with vetturinos for 
taking myself and family to Florence. We talked 
with three or four, and found them asking prices of 
various enormity, from a hundred and fifty scudi 

VOL. I, 10 



218 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

down to little more than ninety ; but Mr. Thompson 
says that they always begin in this way, and will 
probably come down to somewhere about seventy- 
five. Mr. Thompson took me into the Via Porto- 
ghesfs, and showed me an old palace, above which 
rose — not a very customary feature of the architecture 
of Rome — a tall, battlemented tower. At one angle 
of the tower we saw a shrine of the Virgin, with a 
lamp, and all the appendages of those numerous 
shrines which we see at the street corners, and in 
hundreds of places about the city. Three or four 
centuries ago this palace was inhabited by a noble- 
man who had an only son and a large pet monkey, 
and one day the monkey caught the infant up and 
clambered to this lofty turret, and sat there with him 
in his arms, grinning and chattering like the Devil 
himself The father was in despair, but was afraid 
to pursue the monkey lest he should fling down the 
child from the height of the tow^er and make his 
escape. At last he vowed that if the boy were safely 
restored to him he would build a shrine at the summit 
of the tower, and cause it to be kept as a sacred place 
forever. By and by the monkey came down and 
deposited the child on the ground ; the father fulfilled 
his vow, built the shrine, and made it obligatory on 
all future possessors of the palace to keep the lamp 
burning before it. Centuries have passed, the prop- 
erty has changed hands; but still there is the 
shrine on the giddy top of the tower, far aloft over 
the street, on the very spot where the monkey sat, 
and there burns the lamp, in memory of the father's 



1858.] ITALY. 219 

vow. This being the tenure by which the estate is 
held, the extinguishment of that flame might yet turn 
the present owner out of the palace. 

May 2\st. — Mamma and I went, yesterday forenoon, 
to the Spada Palace, which we found among the 
intricacies of Central Rome ; a dark and massive old 
edifice, built around a court, the fronts giving on 
which are adorned with statues in niches, and sculp- 
tured ornaments. A woman led us up a staircase, 
and ushered us into a great, gloomy hall, square and 
lofty, and wearing a very gray and ancient aspect, 
its walls being painted in chiaro-oscuro, apparently a 
great many years ago. The hall was lighted by small 
windows, high upward from the floors, and admitting 
only a dusky light. The only furniture or ornament, 
so far as I recollect, was the colossal statue of Pompey, 
which stands on its pedestal at one side, certainly the 
sternest and severest of figures, and producing the most 
awful impression on the spectator. Much of the 
effect, no doubt, is due to the sombre obscurity of the 
hall, and to the loneliness in which the great naked 
statue stands. It is entirely nude, except for a cloak 
that hangs down from the left shoulder ; in the left 
hand, it holds a globe ; the right arm is extended. 
The whole expression is such as the statue might have 
assumed, if, during the tumult of Csesar's murder, it 
had stretched forth its marble hand, and motioned the 
conspirators to give over the attack, or to be quiet, 
now that their victim had fallen at its feet. On the 
left leg, about midway above the ankle, there is a dull, 
red stain, said to be Caesar's blood j but, of course, it 



220 FBENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

is just such a red stain in the marble as may be seen 
on the statue of Antinoiis at the Capitol. I could not 
see any resemblance in the face of the statue to that 
of the bust of Pompey, shown as such at the Capitol, 
in which there is not the slightest moral dignity, or 
sign of intellectual eminence. I am glad to have seen 
this statue, and glad to remember it in that gray, 
dim, lofty hall; glad that there were no bright 
frescos on the walls, and that the ceiling was wrought 
with massive beams, and the floor paved with ancient 
brick. 

From this anteroom we passed through several 
saloons containing pictures, some of which were by 
eminent artists ; the Judith of Guido, a copy of which 
used to weary me to death, year after year, in the 
Boston Athenaeum ; and many portraits of Cardinals 
in the Spada family, and other pictures by Guido. 
There were some portraits, also of the family, by 
Titian ; some good pictures by Guercino ; and many 
which I should have been glad to examine more at 
leisure ; but, by and by, the custode made his appear- 
ance, and began to close the shutters, under pretence 
that the sunshine would injure the paintings, — an 
effect, I presume, not very likely to follow after two 
or three centuries' exposure to light, air, and whatever 
else might hurt them. However, the pictures seemed 
to be in much better condition, and more enjoyable, 
so far as they had merit, than those in most Eoman 
picture-galleries ; although the Spada Palace itself 
has a decayed and impoverished aspect, as if the 
family had , dwindled from its former state and 



1858.] ITALY. 221 

grandeur, and now, perhaps, smuggled itself into 
some out-of-the-way corner of the old edifice. If such 
be the case, there is something touching in their still 
keeping possession of Pompey's statue, which makes 
their house famous, aud the sale of which might give 
them the means of building it up anew ; for surely 
it is worth the whole sculpture-gallery of the Vatican. 
In the afternoon Mr. Thompson and I went, for 
the third or fourth time, to negotiate with vetturinos. 
.... So far as I know them they are a very tricky 
set of people, bent on getting as much as they can, 
by hook or by c^ook, out of the unfortunate individual 
who falls into their hands. They begin, as I have 
said, by asking about twice as much as they ought to 
receive ; and anything between this exorbitant amount 
and the just price is what they thank heaven for, as 
so much clear gain. Nevertheless, I am not quite 
sure that the Italians are worse than other people 
even in this matter. In other countries it is the 
custom of persons in trade to take as much as they 
can get from the public, fleecing one man to exactly 
the same extent as another; here they take what 
they can obtain from the individual customer. In 
fact, Roman tradesmen do not pretend to deny that 
they ask and receive different prices from different 
people, taxing them according to their supposed 
means of payment; the article supplied being the 
same in one case as in another. A shopkeeper 
looked into his books to see if we were of the class 
who paid two pauls, or only a paul and a half for 
candles; a charcoal-dealer said, that seventy baiocchi 



222 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l85a 

was a very reasonable sum for us to pay for charcoal, 
and that some persons paid eighty ; and Mr. Thomjjson, 
recognizing the rule, told the old vetturino that " a 
hundred and fifty scudi was a very proper charge 
for carrying a prince to Florence, but not for carrying 
me, who was merely a very good artist." The result 
is well enough; the rich man lives expensively, and 
pays a larger share of the profits which people of a 
different system of trade-morality would take equally 
from the poor man. The effect on the conscience of 
the vetturino, however, and of tradesmen of all kinds, 
cannot be good ; their only intent Jbeing, not to do 
justice between man and man, but to go as deep as 
they can into all pockets, and to the very bottom of 
some. 

We had nearly concluded a bargain, a day or two 
ago, with a vetturino to take or send us to Florence, 
via Perugia, in eight days, for a hundred scudi ; but 
he now drew back, under pretence of having misun- 
derstood the terms, though, in reality, no doubt, he 
was in hopes of getting a better bargain from some- 
body else. We made an agreement with another 
man, whom Mr. Thompson knows and highly recom- 
mends, and immediately made it sm-e and legally 
binding by exchanging a formal written contract, in 
which everything is set down, even to milk, butter, 
bread, eggs, and coffee, which we are to have for 
breakfast ; the vetturino being to pay every expense 
for himself, his horses, and his passengers, and include 
it within ninety-five scudi, and five crowns in addition 
for huon-mano 



1858.] ITALY. 223 

May 22d. — Yesterday, while we were at dinner, 

Mr. called. I never saw him but once before, 

and that was at the door of our little red cottage in 
Lenox ; he sitting in a wagon with one or two of the 
Sedgewicks, merely exchanging a greeting with me 
from under the brim of his straw hat, and driving on. 
He presented himself now with a long white beard, 
such as a palmer might have worn as the growth of 
his long pilgrimages, a brow almost entirely bald, 
and what hair he has quite hoary; a forehead im- 
pending, yet not massive ; dark, bushy eyebrows and 
keen eyes, without much softness in them ; a dark 
and sallow complexion ; a slender figure, bent a little 
with age ; but at once alert and infirm. It surprised 
me to see him so venerable ; for, as poets are Apollo's 
kinsmen, we are inclined to attribute to them his 
enviable quality of never growing old. There was 
a weary look in his face, as if he were tired of see- 
ing things and doing things, though with certainly 
enough still to see and do, if need were. My family 
gathered about him, and he conversed with great 
readiness and simplicity about his travels, and what- 
ever other subject came up ; telling us that he had 
been abroad five times, and was now getting a little 
home-sick, and had no more eagerness for sights, 
though his " gals " (as he called his daughter and 
another young lady) dragged him out to see the 
wonders of Rome again. His manners and whole 
aspect are very particularly plain, though not affect- 
edly so ; but it seems as if in the decline of life, and 
the security of his position, he had put off" whatever 



224 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

artificial polish he may have heretofore had, and re- 
sumed the simpler habits and deportment of his early 
New England breeding. Not but what you discover, 
nevertheless, that he is a man of refinement, who has 
seen the world, and is well aware of his own place in 
it. He spoke w^ith great pleasure of his recent visit 
to Spain. I introduced the subject of Kansas, and 
methought his face forthwith assumed something of 
the bitter keenness of the editor of a political news- 
paper, while speaking of the triumph of the admin- 
istration over the free-soil opposition. I inquired 

whether he had seen S , and he gave a very sad 

account of him as he appeared at their last meeting, 

which was in Paris. S , he thought, had suffered 

terribly, and would never again be the man he was ^ 
he w^as getting fat ; he talked continually of himself, 
and of trifles concerning himself, and seemed to have 

no interest for other matters ; and Mr. feared 

that the shock upon his nerves had extended to his 
intellect, and was irremediable. He said that S — — 
ought to retire from public life, but had no friend 
true enough to tell him so. This is about as sad as 

anything can be. I hate to have S undergo the 

fate of a martyr, because he was not naturally of the 
stuff that martyrs are made of, and it is altogether 
by mistake that he has thrust himself into the posi- 
tion of one. He was merely, though with excellent 
abilities, one of the best of fellows, and ought to have 
lived and died in good fellowship with all the world. 

S was not in the least degree excited about this 

or any other subject. He uttered neither passion nor 



1868.] ITALY. 225 

poetry, but excellent good sense, and accurate in- 
formation on whatever subject transpired ; a very 
pleasant man to associate with, but rather cold, I 
should imagine, if one should seek to touch his heart 
with one's own. He shook hands kindly all round, 
but not with any warmth of gripe ; although the ease 
of his deportment had put us all on sociable terms 
with him. 

At seven o'clock, we went by invitation to take tea 
with Miss Bremer. After much search, and lumber- 
ing painfully up two or three staircases in vain, and 
at last going about in a strange circuity, we found 
her in a small chamber of a large old building, situ- 
ated a little way from the brow of the Tarpeian Eock. 
It was the tiniest and humblest domicile that I have 
seen in Rome, just large enough to hold her narrow 
bed, her tea-table, and a table covered with books, — 
photographs of Roman ruins, and some pages written 
by herself. I wonder whether she be poor. Probably 
so ; for she told us that her expense of living here is 
only five pauls a day. She welcomed us, however, 
with the greatest cordiality and ladylike simplicity, 
making no allusion to the humbleness of her environ- 
ment (and making us also lose sight of it, by the 
absence of all apology) any more than if she were 
receiving us in a palace. There is not a better bred 
woman ; and yet one does not think whether she has 
any breeding or no. Her little bit of a round table 
was already spread for us with her blue earthenware 
teacups ; and after she had got through an interview 
with the Swedish Minister, and dismissed him with a 
10* ' o 



226 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l85a 

hearty pressure of his hand between both her own, 
she gave us our tea, and some bread, and a mouthful 
of cake. Meanwhile, as the day declined, there had 
been the most beautiful view over the campagna, out 
of one of her windows ; and, from the other, looking 
towards St. Peter's, the broad gleam of a mildly 
glorious sunset ; not so pompous and magnificent as 
many that I have seen in America, but softer and 
sweeter in all its changes. As its lovely hues died 
slowly away, the half-moon shone out brighter and 
brighter ; for there was not a cloud in the sky, and it 
seemed like the moonlight of my younger days. In 
the garden, beneath her window, verging upon the 
Tarpeian Rock, there was shrubbery and one large 
tree, softening the brow of the famous precipice, 
adown which the old Romans used to fling their 
traitors, or sometimes, indeed, their patriots. 

Miss Bremer talked plentifully in her strange 
manner, — good English enough for a foreigner, but 
so oddly intonated and accented, that it is impossible 
to be sure of more than one word in ten. Being so 
little comprehensible, it is very singular how she 
contrives to make her auditors so perfectly certain, as 
they are, that she is talking the best sense, and in 
the kindliest spirit. There is no better heart than 
hers, and not many sounder heads ; and a little touch 
of sentiment comes delightfully in, mixed up with a 
quick and delicate humor and the most perfect sim- 
plicity. There is also a very pleasant atmosphere of 
maidenhood about her ; we are sensible of a freshness 
and odor of the morning still in this little withered 



1858.] ITALY. 227 

rose, — its recompense for never having been gathered 
and worn, but only diffusing fragrance on its stem. 
I forget mainly what we talked about, — a good deal 
about art, of course, although that is a subject of 
which Miss Bremer evidently knows nothing. Once 
we spoke of fleas, — insects that, in Rome, come home 
to everybody's business and bosom, and are so com- 
mon and inevitable, that no delicacy is felt about al- 
luding to the sufferings they inflict. Poor little Miss 
Bremer was tormented with one while turning out our 
tea She talked, among other things, of the win- 
ters in Sweden, and said that she liked them, long and 
severe as they are ; and this made me feel ashamed of 
dreading the winters of New England, as I did before 
coming from home, and do now still more, after five 
or six mild English Decembers. 

By and by, two young ladies came in, — Miss 
Bremer's neighbors, it seemed, — fresh from a long 
walk on the campagna, fresh and weary at the same 
time. One apparently was German, and the other 
French, and they brought her an offering of flowerc, 
and chattered to her with affectionate vivacity ; and, 
as we were about taking leave. Miss Bremer asked 
them to accompany her and us on a visit to the edge 
of the Tarpeian Rock. Before we left the room, she 
took a bunch of roses that were in a vase, and gave 
them to Miss Shepard, who told her that she should 
make her six sisters happy by giving one to each. 
Then we went down the intricate stairs, and, emer- 
ging into the garden, walked round the brow of the 
hill, which plunges headlong with exceeding abrupt- 



228 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

ness ; but, so far as I could see in the moonlight, 
is no longer quite a precipice. Then we re-entered 
the house, and went up stairs and down again, 
through intricate passages, till we got into the street, 
which was still peopled with the ragamuffins who 
infest and burrow in that part of Rome. We re- 
turned through an archway, and descended the broad 
flight of steps into the piazza of the Capitol ; and 
from the extremity of it, just at the head of the long 
graded way, where Castor and Pollux and the old 
milestones stand, we turned to the left, and followed 
a somewhat winding path, till we came into the court 
of a palace. This court is bordered by a parapet, 
leaning over which we saw the sheer precipice of the 
Tarpeiitn Rock, about the height of a four-story 

house 

On the edge of this, before we left the court, Miss 
Bremer bade us farewell, kissing my wife most affec- 
tionately on each cheek, .... and then turning 
towards myself, .... she pressed my hand, and we 
parted, proDably never to meet again. God bless 
her good heart ! . . . . She is a most amiable little 
woman, worthy to be the maiden aunt of the whole 
human race. I suspect, by the by, that she does not 
like me half so well as I do her ; it is my impression 
that she thinks me unamiable, or that there is some- 
thing or other not quite right about me. I am sorry 
if it be so, because such a good, kindly, clear-sighted, 
and delicate person is very apt to have reason at the 
bottom of her harsh thoughts, when, in rare cases, 
she allows them to harbor with her. 



1858.] ITALY. 229 

To-day, and for some days past, we have been in 
quest of lodgings for next winter; a weary search, up 
interminable staircases, which seduce us upward to no 
successful result. It is very disheartening not to be 
able to place the slightest reliance on the integrity of 
the people we are to deal with ; not to believe in any 
connection between their words and their purposes ; 
to know that they are certainly telling you falsehoods, 
while you are not in a position to catch hold of the lie, 
and hold it up in their faces. 

This afternoon we called on Mr. and Mrs. at 

the Hotel de I'Europe, but foimd only the former at 
home. We had a pleasant visit, but I made no obser- 
vations of his character save such as I have already 
sufficiently recorded ; and when we had been with 
him a little while, Mrs. Chapman, the artist's wife, 
Mr. Terry, and my friend, Mr. Thompson, came in. 

received them all with the same good degree of 

cordiality that he did ourselves, not cold, not very 
warm, not annoj^ed, not ecstatically delighted ; a man, 
I should suppose, not likely to have ardent individual 
preferences, though perhaps capable of stern individual 
dislikes. But I take him, at all events, to be a very 
upright man, and pursuing a narrow track of integrity; 
he is a man whom I would never forgive (as I would 
a thousand other men) for the slightest moral delin- 
quency. I would not be bound to say, however, that 
he has not the little sin of a fretful and peevish habil : 
and yet perhaps I am a sinner myself for thinking so. 

May 22>d. — This morning I breakfasted at William 
Story's, and met there Mr. Bryant, Mr. T (an 



230 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

English gentleman), Mr. and Mrs. Apthorp, Miss 
Hosmer, and one or two other ladies. Bryant was 
very quiet, and made no conversation audible to the 

general table. Mr. T talked of English politics 

and public men ; the " Times " and other newspapers, 
English clubs and social habits generally ; topics in 
which I could well enough bear my part of the discus- 
sion. A/ter breakfast, and aside from the ladies, he 
mentioned an illustration of Lord EUenborough's lack 
of administrative ability, — a proposal seriously made 
by his /ordship in reference to the refractory Se- 
poys 

We had a very pleasant breakfast, and certainly a 
breakfast is much preferable to a dinner, not merely 
in the enjoyment while it is passing, but afterwards. 
I made a good suggestion to Miss Hosmer for the de- 
sign of a fountain, — a lady bursting into tears, water 
gushing from a thousand pores, in literal translation 
of the phrase ; and to call the statue " Niobe, all 
Tears." I doubt whether she adopts the idea; but 
Bernini would have been delighted with it. I should 
think the gush of water might be so arranged as to 
form a beautiful drapery about the figure, swaying 
and fluttering with every breath of wind, and re- 
arranging itself in the calm ; in which case, the lady 
might be said to have " a habit of weeping." .... 
Apart, with William Story, he and I talked of the 
unluckiness of Friday, etc. I like him particularly 
well 

We have been plagued to-day with our preparations 
fo\ leaving Rome to-morrow, and especially with veri- 



1858.] ITALY. 231 

fying the inventory of furniture, before giving up the 
house to our landlord. He and his daughter have 
been examining every separate article, down even to 
the kitchen skewers, I believe, and charging us to the 
amount of several scudi for cracks and breakages, 
which very probably existed when we came into 
possession. It is very uncomfortable to have dealings 
with such a mean people (though our landlord is 
German), — mean in their business transactions ; mean 
even in their beggary ; for the beggars seldom ask for 
more than a mezzo baioccho, though they sometimes 
gTumble when you suit jour gratuity exactly to their 
petition. It is pleasant to record that the Italians 
have great faith in the honor of the English and Amer- 
icans, and never hesitate to trust entire strangers, to 
any reasonable extent, on the strength of their being 
of the honest Anglo-Saxon race. 

This evening, U and I took a farewell walk in 

the Pincian Gardens to see the sunset ; and found 
them crowded with people, promenading and listening 
to the music of the French band. It was the feast of 
Whitsunday, which probably brought a greater throng 
than usual abroad. 

When the sun went down, we descended into the 
Piazza del Popolo, and thence into the Via Ripetta, 
and emerged through a gate to the shore of the Tiber, 
along which there is a pleasant walk beneath a grove 
of trees. We traversed it once and back again, looking 
at the rapid river, which still kept its mud-puddly 
aspect even in the clear twilight, and beneath the 
brightening moon. The great bell of St. Peter's tolled 



232 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

with a deep boom, a grand and solemn sound ; the 
moon gleamed through the branches of the trees above 

us ; and U spoke with somewhat alarming fervor 

of her love for Rome, and regret at leaving it. We* 
shall have done the child no good office in bringing 
her here, if the rest of her life is to be a dream of this 
"city of the soul," and an unsatisfied yearning to 
come back to it. On the other hand, nothing elevating 
and refining can be really injurious, and so I hope she 
will always be the better for Rome, even if her life 
should be spent where there are no pictures, no stat- 
ues, nothing but the dryness and meagreness of a New 
England village. 

JOURNEY TO FLORENCE. 

Civita Castellana, May 2ith. — We left Rome this 
morning, after troubles of various kinds, and a dis- 
pute in the first place with Lalla, our female servant, 

and her mother Mother and daughter exploded 

into a livid rage, and cursed us plentifully, — wishing 
that we might never come to our journey's end, and 
that we might all break our necks or die of apoplexy, 
— the most awful curse that an Italian knows how to 
invoke upon his enemies, because it precludes the 
possibility of extreme unction. However, as we are 
heretics, and certain of damnation therefore, anyhow, 
it does not much matter to us ; and also the anathe- 
mas may have been blown back upon those who in- 
voked them, like the curses that were flung out from 
the balcony of St. Peter's during Holy Week and 



1858.] ITALY. 233 

wafted by heaven's breezes right into the faces of some 
priests who stood near the pope. Next we had a 
disagreement with two men who brought down our 
luggage, and pat it on the vetturo ; . . . . and, lastly, 
we were infested with beggars, who hung round the 
carriages with doleful petitions, till we began to move 
away ; but the previous warfare had put me into too 
stern a mood for almsgiving, so that they also were 
doubtless inclined to curse more than to bless, and I 
am persuaded that we drove off under a perfect 
shower of anathemas. 

We passed through the Porta del Popolo at about 
eight o'clock ; and after a moment's delay, while the 
passport was examined, began our journey along the 
Flaminian Way, between two such high and inhospi- 
table walls of brick or stone, as seem to shut in all the 
avenues to Rome. We had not gone far before we 
heard military music in advance of us, and saw the 
road blocked up with people, and then the glitter of 
muskets, and soon appeared the drummers, fifers, and 
trumpeters, and then the first battalion of a French 
regiment, marching into the city, with two mounted 
officers at their head ; then appeared a second and 
then a third battalion, the whole seeming to make 
almost an army, though the number on their caps 
showed them all to belong to one regiment, — the 1st } 
then cams a battery of artillery, then a detachment of. 
horse, — these last, by the crossed keys on their hel- 
mets, being apparently papal troops. All were young, 
fresh, good-looking men, in excellent trim as to uni- 
form and equipmentSj and marched rather as if they 



234 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

were setting out on a campaign than returning from 
it ;. the fact being, I believe, that they have been en- 
camped or in barracks within a few miles of the city. 
Nevertheless, it reminded me of the military proces- 
sions of various kinds which so often, two thousand 
years ago and more, have entered Rome over the Fla- 
minian Way, and over all the roads that led to the 
famous city, — triumphs oftenest, but sometimes the 
downcast train of a defeated army, like those who re- 
treated before Hannibal. On the whole, I was not 
sorry to see the Gauls still pouring into Rome ; but 
yet I begin to find that I have a strange affection for 
it, and so did we all, — the rest of the family in a 
greater degree than myself even. It is very singular, 
the sad embrace with which Rome takes possession of 
the soul. Though we intend to return in a few 
months, and for a longer residence than this has been, 
yet we felt the city pulling at our heartstrings far 
more than London did, where we shall probably never 
spend much time again. It may be because the in- 
tellect finds a home there more than in any other spot 
in the world, and wins the heart to stay with it, in 
spite of a good many things strewn all about to dis- 
gust us. 

The road in the earlier part of the way was not 
particularly picturesque, — the country undulated, but 
scarcely rose into hills, and was destitute of trees; 
there were a few shapeless ruins, too indistinct for us 
to make out whether they were Roman or mediaeval. 
Nothing struck me so much, in the forenoon, as the 
spectacle of a peasant woman riding on horseback as 



1858.] ITALY. 235 

if she were a man. The houses were few, and those 
of a dreary aspect, built of gray stone, and looking 
bare and desolate, with not the slightest promise of 
comfort within doors. We passed two or three lo- 
candas or inns, and finally came to the village (if vil- 
lage it were, for I remember no houses except our 
osteria) of Castel Nuovo di Porta, where we were to 
take a dejeuner d, la fourchette, which was put upon 
the table between twelve and one. On this journey, 
according to the custom of travellers in Italy, we pay 
the vetturino a certain sum, and live at his expense ; 
and this meal was the first specimen of his catering on 
our behalf. It consisted of a beefsteak, rather dry 
and hard, but not unpalatable, and a large omelette ; 
and for beverage, two quart bottles of red wine, which, 

being tasted, had an agreeable acid flavor The 

locanda was built of stone, and had what looked like 
an old Roman altar in the basement-hall, and a 
shrine, with a lamp before it, on the staircase ; and 
the large public saloon in which we ate had a brick 
floor, a ceiling with cross-beams, meagrely painted in 
fresco, and a scanty supply of chairs and settees. 

After lunch, we wandered out into a valley or 
ravine near the house, where we gathered some 

flowers, and J found a nest with the young birds 

in it, which, however, he put back into the bush 
whence he took it. 

Our afternoon drive was more picturesque and 
noteworthy. Soracte rose before us, bulging up 
quite abruptly out of the plain, and keeping itself 
entirely distinct from a whole horizon of hills. Byron 



236 FEENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

well compares it to a wave just on the bend, and 
about to break over towards the spectator. As we 
approached it nearer and nearer, it looked like the 
barrenest great rock that ever protruded out of the 
substance of the earth, with scarcely a strip or a 
spot of verdure upon its steep and gray declivities. 
The road kept trending towards the mountain, fol- 
lowing the line of the old Flaminian Way, which 
we could see, at frequent intervals, close beside the 
modern track. It is paved with large flag-stones, 
laid so accurately together, that it is still, in some 
places, as smooth and even as the floor of a church ; 
and everywhere the tufts of grass find it difficult 
to root themselves into the interstices. Its course 
is straighter than that of the road of to-day, which 
often turns aside to avoid obstacles which the ancient 
one surmounted. Much of it, probably, is covered 
with the soil and overgrowth deposited in later 
years ; and, now and then, we could see its flag- 
stones partly protruding from the bank through 
which our road has been cut, and thus showing that 
the thickness of this massive pavement was more 
than a foot of solid stone. "VYe lost it over and over 
again; but still it reappeared, now on one side of 
us, now on the other ; perhaps from beneath the 
roots of old trees, or the pasture-land of a thousand 
years old, and leading on towards the base of 
Soracte. I forget where we finally lost it. Passing 
through a town called Kignano, we found it dressed 
out in festivity, with festoons of foliage along both 
sides of the street, which ran beneath a triumphal 



1858.] ITALY. 23 T 

arch, bearing an inscription in honor of a ducal 
personage of the Massinii family. I know no occa- 
sion for the feast, except that it is Whitsuntide. 
The town was thronged with peasants, in their best 
attire, and we met others on their way thither, par- 
ticularly women and girls, with heads bare in the 
sunshine ; but there was no tiptoe jollity, nor, in- 
deed, any more show of festivity than I have seen 
in my own country at a cattle-show or muster. 
Keally, I think, not half so much. 

The road still grew more and more picturesque, 
and now lay along ridges, at the bases of which 
were deep ravines and hollow valleys. Woods were 
not wanting ; wilder forest than I have seen since 
leaving America, of oak-trees chiefly ; and, among 
the green foliage, grew golden tufts of broom, 
making a gay and lovely combination of hues. I 
must not forget to mention the poppies, which 
burned like live coals along the wayside, and lit 
up the landscape, even a single one of them, with 
wonderful effect. At other points, we saw olive- 
trees, hiding their eccentricity of boughs under thick 
masses of foliage of a livid tint, which is caused, I 
believe, by their turning their reverse sides to the 
light and to the spectator. Vines were abundant, 
but were of little account in the scene. By and by 
we came in sight of the high, flat table-land, on 
which stands Civit^ Castellana, and beheld, straight 
downward, between us and the town, a deep level 
valley with a river winding through it ; it was the 
valley of the Treja. A precipice, hundreds of feet in 



238 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

height, falls perpendicularly upon the valley, from 
the site of Civitk Castellana ; there is an equally 
abrupt one, probably, on the side from which we 
saw it ; and a modern road, skilfully constructed, 
goes winding down to the stream, crosses it by a 
narrow stone bridge, and winds upward into the 
town. After passing over the bridge, I alighted, 

with J and R , .... and made the ascent 

on foot, along walls of natural rock, in which old 
Etruscan tombs were hollowed out. There are like- 
wise antique remains of masonry, whether Roman 
or of what earlier period, I cannot tell. At the 
summit of the acclivity, which brought us close to 
the town, our vetturino took us into the carriage 
again and quickly brought us to what appears to be 
really a good hotel, where all of us are accommo- 
dated with sleeping-chambers in a range, beneath 
an arcade, entirely secluded from the rest of the 
population of the hotel. After a splendid dinner 
(that is, splendid, considering that it was ordered 

by our hospitable vetturino), U , Miss Shepard, 

J , and I walked out of the little town, in the 

opposite direction from our entrance, and crossed a 
bridge- at the height of the table-land, instead of 
at its base. On either side, we had a view down 
into a profound gulf, with sides of precipitous rock, 
and heaps of foliage in its lap, through which ran 
the snowy track of a stream ; here snowy, there 
dark; here hidden among the foliage, there quite 
revealed in the broad depths of the gulf. This was 
wonderfully fine. Walking on a little farther, So- 



1858.] ITALY. 239 

racte came fully into view, starting with bold ab- 
ruptness out of the middle of the country; and 
before we got back, the bright Italian moon was 
throwing a shower of silver over the scene, and 
making it so beautiful that it seemed miserable not 
to know how to put it into words ; a foolish thought, 
however, for such scenes are an expression in them- 
selves, and need not be translated into any feebler 
language. On our walk, we met parties of laborers, 
both men and women, returning from the fields, 
with rakes and wooden forks over their shoulders, 
singing in chorus. It is very customary for women 
to be laboring in the fields. 

TO TERNI. — BORGHETTO. 

May 25th. — We were aroused at four o'clock this 
morning; had some eggs and coffee, and were ready 
to start between five and six ; being thus matutinary, 
in order to get to Temi in time to see the falls. The 
road was very striking and picturesque ; but I remem- 
ber nothing particularly, till we came to Borghetto, 
which stands on a blufi?", with a broad valley sweeping 
round it, through the midst of which flows the JJ.'iber. 
There is an old castle on a projecting point ; and we 
saw other battlemented fortresses, of mediaeval date, 
along our way, forming more beautiful ruins than any 
of the Roman remains to which we have become 
accustomed. This is partly, I suppose, owing to the 
fact that they have been neglected, and allowed to 
mantle their decay with ivy, instead of being cleaned, 



240 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

propped up, and restored. The antiquarian is apt to 
spoil the objects that interest him. 

Sometimes we passed through wildernesses of vari- 
ous trees, each contributing a different hue of verdure 
to the scene ; the vine, also, marrying itself to the fig- 
tree, so that a man might sit in the shadow of both at 
once, and temper the luscious sweetness of the one 
fruit with the fresh flavor of the other. The wayside 
incidents were such as meeting a man and woman 
borne along as prisoners, handcuffed, and in a cart ; 
two men reclining across one another, asleep, and 
lazily lifting their heads to gaze at us as we passed by; 
a woman spinning with a distaflf as she walked along 
the road. An old tomb or tower stood in a lonely 
field, and several caves were hollowed in the rocks, 
which might have been either sepulchres or habita- 
tions. Soracte kept us company, sometimes a little 
on one side, sometimes behind, looming up again and 
again, when we thought that we had done with it, and 
so becoming rather tedious at last, hke a person who 
presents himself for another and another leave-taking 
after the one which ought to have been final. Honey- 
suckles sweetened the hedges along the road. 

After leaving Borghetto, we crossed the broad valley 
of the Tiber, and skirted along one of the ridges that 
border it, looking back upon the road that we had 
passed, lying white behind us. We saw a field covered 
with buttercups, or some other yellow flower, and 
poppies burned along the roadside, as they did yes- 
terday, and there were flowers of a delicious blue, as 
if the blue Italian sky had been broken into little bits, 



1858.] ITALY. 241 

and scattered down upon the green earth. Otricoli 
by and by appeared, situated on a bold promontory 
above the valley, a village of a few gray houses and 
huts, with one edifice gaudily painted in white and 
pink. It looked more important at a distance than 
we found it on our nearer approach. As the road 
kept ascending, and as the hills grew to be mountains, 
we had taken two additional horses, making six in all, 
with a man and boy running beside them, to keep 
them in motion. The boy had two club feet, so incon- 
veniently disposed that it seemed almost inevitable 
for him to stumble over them at every step ; besides 
which, he seemed to tread upon his ankles, and moved 
with a disjointed gait, as if each of his legs and thighs 
]^ad been twisted round together with his feet. Never- 
theless, he had a bright, cheerful, intelligent face, and 
was exceedingly active, keeping up with the horses at 
their trot, and inciting them to better speed when 
they lagged. I conceived a great respect for this poor 
boy, who had what most Italian peasants would con- 
sider an enviable birthright in those two club feet, as 
giving him a sufficient excuse to live on charity, but 
yet took no advantage of them ; on the contrary, 
putting his poor misshapen hoofs to such good use, as 
might have shamed many a better provided biped. 
When he quitted us, he asked no alms of the travel- 
lers, but merely applied to Gaetano for some slight 
recompense for his well-performed service. This 
behavior contrasted most favorably with that of some 
other boys and girls, who ran begging beside the car- 
riage door, keeping up a low, naiserable murmur, lik$ 

VOL. I. 11 p 



242 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

that of a kennel-stream, for a long, long way. Beggars, 
indeed, started up at every point, when we stopped for 
a moment, and whenever a hill imposed a slower pace 
upon us ; each village had his deformity or its infirm- 
ity, offering his wretched petition at the step of the 
carriage ; and even a venerable, white-headed patri- 
arch, the grandfather of all the beggars, seemed to 
grow up by the roadside, but was left behind from 
inability to join in the race with his light-footed 
juniors. No shame is attached to begging in Italy. 
In fact, I rather imagine it to be held an honorable 
profession, inheriting some of the odor of sanctity that 
used to be attached to a mendicant and idle life in the 
days of early Christianity, when every saint lived upon 
Providence, and deemed it meritorious to do nothing 
for his support. 

Murray's guide-book is exceedingly vague and un- 
satisfactory along this route ; and whenever we asked 
Gaetano the name of a village or a castle, he gave 
some one which we had never heard before, and could 
find nothing of in the book. We made out the river 
Nar, however, or what I supposed to be such, though 
he called it Nera. It flows through a most stupendous 
mountain-gorge ; winding its narrow passage between 
high hills, the broad sides of which descend steeply 
upon it, covered with trees and shrubbery, that man- 
tle a host of rocky roughnesses, and make all look 
smooth. Here and there a precipice juts feternly 
forth. We saw an old castle on a hillside, frowning 
down into the gorge ; and farther on, the gray tower 
of Narni stands upon a height, imminent over the 



1858.] ITALY. 243 

depths below, and with its battlemented castle above 
now converted into a prison, and therefore kept 
in excellent repair. A long winding street passes 
through Narni, broadening at one point into a mar- 
ket-place, where an old cathedral showed its venera- 
ble front, and the great dial of its clock, the figures 
on which were numbered in two semicircles of twelve 
points each ; one, I suppose, for noon, and the other 
for midnight. The town has, so far as its principal 
street is concerned, a city like aspect, with large, fair 
edifices, and shops as good as most of those at Rome, 
the smartness of which contrasts strikingly with the 
rude and lonely scenery of mountain and stream, 
through which we had come to reach it. We drove 
through Narni without stopping, and came out from 
it on the other side, where a broad, level valley opened 
before us, most unlike the wild, precipitous gorge 
which had brought us to the town. The road went 
winding down into the peaceful vale, through the 
midst of which flowed the same stream that cuts its 
way between the impending hills, as already described. 
We passed a monk and a soldier, — the two curses of 
Italy, each in his way, — walking sociably side by 
side ; and from Narni to Terni I remember nothing 
that need be recorded. 

Terni, like so many other towns in the neighbor- 
hood, stands in a high and commanding position, 
chosen doubtless for its facilities of defence, in days 
long before the mediaeval warfares of Italy made such 
sites desirable. I suppose that, like Narni and 
Otricoli, it was a city of the Umbrians. We reached 



244 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

it between eleven and twelve o'clock, intending 
to employ the afternoon on a visit to the famous 
falls of Terni ; but, after lowering all day, it has 
begun to rain, and we shall probably have to give 
them up. 

Half past eight o'clock. — It has rained in torrents 
during the afternoon, and we have not seen the 
cascade of Terni ; considerably to my regret, for I 
think I felt the more interest in seeing it, on account 
of its being artificial. Methinks nothing was more 
characteristic of the energy and determination of the 
old Romans, than thus to take a river, which they 
wished to be rid of, and fling it over a giddy precipice, 

breaking it into ten million pieces by the fall 

We are in the Hotel delle tre Colonne, and find it 
reasonably good, though not, so far as we are con- 
cerned, justifying the rapturous commendations of 
previous tourists, who probably travelled at their 
own charges. However, there is nothing really to be 
complained of, either in our accommodations or table, 
and the only wonder is how Gaetano contrives to get 
any profit out of our contract, since the hotel bills 
would alone cost us more than we pay him for the 
journey and all. It is worth while to record as history 
of vetturino commissary customs, that for breakfast 
this morning we had coifee, eggs, and bread and 
butter ; for lunch an omelette, some stewed veal, and 
a dessert of figs and grapes, besides two decanters of 
a light-colored acid wine, tasting very like indiffer- 
ent cider ; for dinner, an excellent vermicelli soup, 
two young fowls, fricasseed, and a hind quarter of 



1858.] ITALY. 245 

roast lamb, with fritters, oranges and figs, and two 
more decanters of the wine aforesaid. 

This hotel is an edifice with a gloomy front upon a 
narrow street, and enterable .through an arch, which 
admits you into an enclosed court ; around the court, 
on each story, run the galleries, with which the par- 
lors and sleeping - apartments communicate. The 
whole house is dingy, probably old, and seems not 
very dean ; but yet bears traces of former magnifi- 
cence ; for instance, in our bedroom, the door of 
which is ornamented with gilding, and the cornices 
with frescos, some of which appear to represent the 
cascade of Terni, the roof is crossed with carved 
beams, and is painted in the interstices ; the floor has 
a carpet, but rough tiles underneath it, which show 
themselves at the margin. The windows admit the 
wind ; the door shuts so loosely as to leave great 
cracks; and, during the rain to-day, there was a 
heavy shower through our ceiling, which made a flood 
upon the carpet. We see no chambermaids; noth- 
ing of the comfort and neatness of an English hotel, 
nor of the smart splendors of an American one ; but 
still this dilapidated palace affords us a better shelter 
than I expected to find in the decayed country towns 
of Italy. In the album of the hotel, I find the names 
of more English travellers than of any other nation 
except the Americans, who, I think, even exceed the 
former; and, the route being the favorite one for 
tourists between Rome and Florence, whatever merit 
the inns have is probably owing to the demands of 
the Anglo-Saxons. I doubt not, if we chose to pay 



246 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

for it, this hotel would supply us with any luxury we 
might ask for ; and perhaps even a gorgeous saloon 
and state bedchamber. 

After dinner, J and I walked out in the dusk 

to see what we could of Terni. We found it compact 
and gloomy (but the latter characteristic might well 
enough be attributed to the dismal sky), with narrow 
streets, paved from wall to wall of the houses, like 
those of all the towns in Italy ; the blocks of paving- 
stone larger than the little square torments of Rome. 
The houses are covered with dingy stucco, and mostly 
low, compared with those of Rome, and inhospitable 
as regards their dismal aspects and uninviting door- 
ways. The streets are intricate, as well as narrow; 
insomuch that we quickly lost our way, and could not 
find it again, though the town is of so small dimen- 
sions, that we passed through it in two directions, 
in the course of our brief wanderings. There are no 
lamp-posts in Terni ; and as it was growing dark, 
and beginning to rain again, we at last inquired of a 
person in the principal piazza, and found our hotel, 
as I expected, within two minutes' walk of where we 
stood. 

rOLIGNO. 

May 26ifA. — At six o'clock this morning, we packed 
ourselves into our vetturo, my wife and I occupying 
the coup6, and drove out of the city gate of Terni. 
There are some old towers near it, ruins of I know 
not what, and care as little, in the plethora of antiq- 
uities and other interesting objects. Through the 



1858.] ITALY. 247 

arched gateway, as we approached, we had a view of 
one of the great hills that surround the town, looking 
partly bright in the early sunshine, and partly catch- 
ing the shadows of the clouds that floated about the 
sky. Our way was now through the Vale of Terni, as 
I believe it is called, where we saw somewhat of the 
fertility of Italy : vines trained on poles, or twining 
round mulberry and other trees, ranged regularly 
like orchards; groves of olives and fields of grain. 
There are interminable shrines in all sorts of situa- 
tions ; some under arched niches, or little pent - 
houses, with a brick-tiled roof, just large enough to 
cover them; or perhaps in some bit of old Roman 
masonry, on the wall of a wayside inn, or in a shallow 
cavity of the natural rock, or high upward in the 
deep cuts of the road; everywhere, in short, so that 
nobody need be at a loss when he feels the religious 
sentiment stir within him. Our way soon began to 
wind among the hills, which rose steep and lofty from 
the scanty, level space that lay between; they con- 
tinually thrust themselves across the passage, and 
appeared as if determined to shut us completely in. 
A great hill would put its foot right before us ; but, 
at the last moment, would grudgingly withdraw it, 
and allow us just room enough to creep by. Adown 
their sides we discerned the dry beds of mountain 
torrents, which had lived too fierce a life to let it be a 
long one. On here and there a hillside or promon- 
tory, we saw a ruined castle or a convent, looking 
from its commanding height upon the road, which 
very likely some robber-knight had formerly infested 



248 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

with his banditti, retreating with his booty to the 
security of such strongholds. We came, once in a 
while, to wretched villages, where ther€ was no token 
of prosperity or comfort ; but perhaps there may have 
been more than we could appreciate, for the Italians 
do not seem to have any of that sort of j^ride which 
we find in New England villages, where every man, 
according to his taste and means, endeavors to make 
his homestead an ornament to the place. We miss 
nothing in Italy more than the neat doorsteps and 
pleasant porches and thresholds and delightful lawns 
or grass-plots, which hospitably invite the imagination 
into a sweet domestic interior. Everything, however 
sunny and luxuriant may be the scene aromid, is 
especially dreary and disheartening in the immediate 
vicinity of an Italian home. 

At Strettura (which, as the name indicates, is a 
very narrow part of the valley) we added two oxen to 
our horses, and began to ascend the Monte Somma, 
which, according to Murray, is nearly four thousand 
feet high, where we crossed it. When we came to 
the steepest part of the ascent, Gaetano, who exercises 
a pretty decided control over his passengers, allowed 
us to walk ; and we all, with one exception, alighted, 
and began to climb the mountain on foot. I walked 
on briskly, and soon left the rest of the party behind, 
reaching the top of the pass in such a short time that 
I could not believe it, and kept onward, expecting still 
another height to climb. But the road began to 
descend, winding among the depths of the hills aS 
heretofore ; now beside the dry, gravelly bed of a 



1858.] ITALY. 219 

departed stream, now crossing it by a bridge, and 
perhaps passing through some other gorge, that yet 
gave no decided promise of an outlet into the world 
beyond. A glimpse might occasionally be caught, 
through a gap between the hill-tops, of a company of 
distant mountain peaks, pyramidal, as these hills are 
apt to be, and resembling the camp of an army of 
giants. The landscape was not altogether savage; 
sometimes a hillside was covered with a rich field of 
grain, or an orchard of olive-trees, looking not unlike 
puffs of smoke, from the peculiar hue of their foliage ; 
but oftener there was a vast mantle of trees and 
shrubbery from top to bottom, the golden tufts of 
the broom shining out amid the verdure, and glad- 
dening the whole. Nothing was dismal except the 
houses j those were always so, whether the compact, 
gray lines of village hovels, with a narrow street 
between, or the lonely farm-house, standing far apart 
from the road^ built of stone, with window-gaps high 
in the wall, empty of glass ; or the half-castle, half- 
dwelling, of which I saw a specimen or two, with 
what looked hke a defensive rampart, drawn around 
its court. I saw no look of comfort anywhere ; and 
continually, in this wild and solitary region, I met 
beggars, just as if I were still in the streets of Rome. 
Boys and girls kept beside me, till they delivered me 
into the hands of others like themselves ; hoary grand- 
sires and grandmothers caught a glimpse of my ap- 
proach, and tottered as fast as they could to intercept 
me ; women came out of the cottages, with rotten 
ijherries on a plate, entreating me to buy them for a 
11* 



250 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

mezzo baioccho ; a man, at work on the road, left his 
toil to beg, and was grateful for the value of a cent ; 
in short, I was never safe from importunity, as long 
as there was a house or a human being in sight. 

We arrived at Spoleto before noon, and while our 
dejeuner was being prepared, looked down from the 
window of the inn into the narrow street beneath, 
which, from the throng of people in it, I judged to 
be the principal one : priests, papal soldiers, women 
with no bonnets on their heads ; peasants in breeches 
and mushroom hats; maids and matrons, drawing 
water at a fountain; idlers, smoking on a bench 
under the window ; a talk, a bustle, but no genuine 
activity. After lunch we walked out to see the lions 
of Spoleto, and found our way up a steep and narrow 
street that led us to the city gate, at which, it is 
traditionally said, Hannibal sought to force an en- 
trance, after the battle of Thrasymene, and was 
repulsed. The gateway has a double arch, on the 
inner one of which is a tablet, recording the above 
tradition as an unquestioned historical fact. From 
the gateway we went in search of the Duomo or 
Cathedral, and were kindly directed thither by an 
officer, who was descending into the town from the 
citadel, which is an old castle, now converted into a 
prison. The Cathedral seemed small, and did not 
much interest us, either by the Gothic front or its 
modernized interior. We saw nothing else in Spoleto, 
but went back to the inn and resumed our journey, 
emerging from the city into the classic valley of the 
Clitumnus, which we did not view under the best of 



1858.] ITALY. 251 

auspices, because it was overcast, and the wind as 
chill as if it had the east in it. The valley, though 
fertile, and smilingly picturesque, perhaps, is not such 
as I should wish to celebrate, either in prose or 
poetry. It is of such breadth and extent, that its 
frame of mountains and ridgy hills hardly serve to 
shut it in sufficiently, and the spectator thinks of a 
boundless plain, rather than of a secluded vale. 
After passing Le Vene, we came to the little temple 
which Byron describes, and which has been supposed 
to be the one immortalized by Pliny. It is very 
small, and stands on a declivity that falls immediately 
from the road, right upon which rises the pediment 
of the temple, while the columns of the other front 
find sufficient height to develop themselves in the 
lower ground. A little farther down than the base 
of the edifice we saw the Clitumnus, so recently from 
its source in the marble rock, that it was stiU as pure 
as a child's heart, and as transparent as truth itself. 
It looked airier than nothing, because it had not sub- 
stance enough to brighten, and it was clearer than the 
atmosphere. I remember nothing else of the valley 
of Clitumnus, except that the beggars in this region 
of proverbial fertility are wellnigh profane in the 
urgency of their petitions ; they absolutely fall down 
on their knees as you approach, in the same attitude 
as if they were praying to their Maker, and beseech 
you for alms with a fervency which I am afraid they 
seldom use before an altar or shrine. Being denied, 
they ran hastily beside the carriage, but got nothing, 
and finally gave over. 



255 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l85S. 

I am so very tired and sleepy that I mean to men- 
tion nothing else to-night, except the city of Trevi, 
which, on the approach from Spoleto, seems completely 
to cover a high, peaked hill, from its pyramidal tip 
to its base. It was the strangest situation in which 
to build a town, where, I should suppose, no horse 
can climb, and whence no inhabitant would think of 
descending into the world, after the approach of age 
should begin to stififen his joints. On looking back on 
this most picturesque of towns (which the road, of 
course, did not enter, as evidently no road could), I 
saw that the highest part of the hill was quite covered 
with a crown of edifices, terminating in a church 
tower ; while a part of the northern side was appar- 
ently too steep for building ; and a cataract of houses 
flowed down the western and southern slopes. There 
seemed to be palaces, churches, everything that a city 
«hould have ; but my eyes are heavy, and I can write 
no more about them, only that I suppose the summit 
of the hill was artificially tenured, so as to prevent its 
crumbling down, and enable it to support the platform 
of edifices which crowns it. 

Mai/ 21th. — We reached Foligno in good season 
yesterday afternoon. Our inn seemed ancient; and, 
under the same roof, on one side of the entrance, was 
the stable, and on the other the coach-house. The 
house is built round a narrow court, with a well of 
water at bottom, and an opening in the roof at top, 
whence the staircases are lighted that wind round the 
Rides of the court, up to the highest story. Our din- 
ing-room and bedrooms were in the latter region, and 



1858.] ITALY. 2^3 

were all paved with brick, and without carpets ; and 
the characteristic of the whole was an exceeding plain- 
ness and antique clumsiness of fitting up. We found 
ourselves sufficiently comfortable, however; and, as 
has been the case throughout oui* journey, had a very 
fair and well-cooked dinner. It shows, as perhaps I 
have already remarked, that it is still possible to live 
well in Italy, at no great expense, and that the high 
prices charged to the forestieri at Rome and elsewhere 
are artificial, and ought to be abated 

The day had darkened since morning, and was now 
ominous of rain ; but as soon as we were established, 
we sallied out to see whatever was worth looking at. 
A beggar boy, with one leg, followed us, without ask- 
ing for anything, apparently only for the pleasure of 
our company, though he kept at too great a distance 
for conversation, and indeed did not attempt to speak. 

We went first to the Cathedral, which has a Gothic 
front, and a modernized interior, stuccoed and white- 
washed, looking as neat as a New England meeting- 
house, and very mean, after our familiarity with the 
gorgeous churches in other cities. There were some 
pictures in the chapels, but, I believe, all modern, 
and I do not remember a single one of them. Next 
we went, without any guide, to a church attached to a 
convent of Dominican monks, with a Gothic exterior, 
and two hideous pictures of Death, — the skeleton lean- 
mg on his scythe, one on each side of the door. This 
church, likewise, was whitewashed, but we understood 
that it had been originally frescoed all over, and by 
famous hands; but these pictures, having become 



254 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

much injured, they were all obliterated, as we saw, — 
all, that is to say, except a few specimens of the best 
preserved, which were spared to show the world what 
the whole had been. I thanked my stars that the 
obliteration of the rest had taken place before our 
visit ; for if anything is dreary and calculated to make 
the beholder utterly miserable, it is a faded fresco, 
with spots of the white plaster dotted over it. 

Our one-legged boy had followed us into the church 
and stood near the door till he saw us ready to come 
out, when he hurried on before us, and waited a little 
way off to see whither we should go. We still went 
on at random, taking the first turn that offered itself 
and soon came to another old church, — that of St. 
Mary within the Walls, — into which we entered, and 
found it whitewashed, like the other two. This was 
especially fortunate, for the doorkeeper informed us 
that, two years ago, the whole church (except, I sup- 
pose, the roof, which is of timber) had been covered 
with frescos by Pinturicchio, all of which had been 
ruthlessly obliterated, except a very few fragments. 
These he proceeded to show us ; poor, dim ghosts of 
what may once have been beautiful, — now so far gone 
towards nothingness that I was hardly sure whether 
I saw a glimmering of the design or not. By the by, 
it was not Pinturicchio, as I have written above, but 
Giotto, assisted, I believe, by Cimabue, who painted 
these frescos. Our one-legged attendant had fol- 
lowed us also into this church, and again hastened 
out of it before us ; and still we heard the dot of his 
crutch upon the pavement, as we passed from street 



1858.] ITALY. 255 

to street. By and by a sickly-looking man met us, 
and begged for " qualche cosa " ; but the boy shouted 
to him "Niente ! " whether intimating that we would 
give him nothing, or that he himself had a prior claim 
to all our charity, I cannot tell. However, the beg- 
gar man turned round, and likewise followed our devi- 
ous course. Once or twice we missed him ; but it was 
only because he could not walk so fast as we ; for he 
appeared again as we emerged from the door of an- 
other church. Our one-legged friend we never missed 
for a moment ; he kept pretty near us, — near enough 
to be amused by our indecision whither to go ; and he 
seemed much delighted when it began to rain, and he 
saw us at a loss how to find our way back to the hotel. 
Nevertheless, he did not offer to guide us ; but 
stumped on behind with a faster or slower dot of his 
crutch, according to our pace. I began to think that 
he must have been engaged as a spy upon our move- 
ments by the police who had taken away my pass- 
port at the city gate. In this way he attended us to 
the door of the hotel, where the beggar had already 
arrived. The latter again put in his doleful petition ; 
the one-legged boy said not a word, nor seemed to ex- 
pect anything, and both had to go away without so 
much as a mezzo baioccho out of our pockets. The 
multitude of beggars in Italy makes the heart as obdu- 
rate as a paving-stone. 

We left Foligno this morning, and, all ready for us 
at the door of the hotel, as we got into the carriage, 
were our friends, the beggar man and the one-legged 
boy ; the latter holding out his ragged hat, and smil- 



256 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l85& 

ing with as confident an air as if he had done us some 
very particular service, and were certain of being paid 
for it, as from contract. It was so very funny, so im- 
pudent, so utterly absurd, that I could not help giv- 
ing him a trifle ; but the man got nothing, — a fact 
that gives me a twinge or two, for he looked sickly and 
miserable. But where everybody begs, everybody, as 
a general rule, must be denied ; and, besides, they act 
their misery so well that you are never sure of the 
genuine article. 

PEEUGIA. 

May 2^tK — As I said last night, we left Foligno 
betimes in the morning, which was bleak, chill, and 
very threatening, there being very little blue sky 
anywhere, and the clouds lying heavily on some of 
the mountain-ridges. The wind blew sharply right in 

U 's face and mine, as we occupied the coupe, so 

that there must have been a great deal of the north 
in it. We drove through a wide plain — the Um- 
brian valley, I suppose — and soon passed the old 
town of Spello, just touching its skirts, and wondering 
how people, who had this rich and convenient plain 
from which to choose a site, could think of covering 
a huge island of rock with their dwellings, — for Spello 
tumbled its crooked and narrow streets down a steep 
descent, and cannot well have a yard of even space 
within its walls. It is said to contain some rare 
treasures of ancient pictorial art. 

I do not remember much that we saw on our route^ 
The plains and the lower hillsides seemed fruitful 



1858.] ITALY. 257 

of everything that belongs to Italy, especially the 
olive and the vine. As usual, there were a great 
many shrines, and frequently a cross by the wayside. 
Hitherto it had been merely a plain wooden cross ; 
but now almost every cross was hung with various 
instruments, represented in wood, apparently symbols 
of the crucifixion of our Saviour, — the spear, the 
sponge, the crown of thorns, the hammer, a pair of 
pincers, and always St. Peter's cock, made a promi- 
nent figure, generally perched on the summit of the 
cross. 

From our first start this morning we had seen 
mists in various quarters, betokening that there was 
rain in those spots, and now it began to spatter in 
our own faces, although within the wide extent of our 
prospect we could see the sunshine falling on por- 
tions of the valley. A rainbow, too, shone out, and 
remained so long visible that it appeared to have 
made a permanent stain in the sky- 
By and by we reached Assisi, which is magnifi- 
cently situated for pictorial purposes, with a gray 
castle above it, and a gray wall around it, itself on a 
mountain, and looking over the great plain which we 
had been traversing, and through which lay our on- 
/ward way. "We drove through the Piazza Grande 
[to an ancient house a little beyond, where a hos- 
pitable old lady receives travellers for a consideration, 
without exactly keeping an inn. 

In the piazza we saw the beautiful front of a temple 
of Minerva, consisting of several marble pillars, fluted, 
and with rich capitals supporting a pediment. It was 



258 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

as fine as anything I had seen at Rome, and is now, 
of course, converted into a Cathohc church. 

I ought to have said that, instead of driving 
straight to the old lady's, we alighted at the door 
of a church near the city gate, and went in to inspect 
some melancholy frescos, and thence clambered up 
a narrow street to the Cathedral, which has a Gothic 
front, old enough, but not very impressive. I really 
remember not a single object that we saw within, 
but am pretty certain that the interior had been 
stuccoed and whitewashed. The ecclesiastics of old 
time did an excellent thing in covering the interiors 
of their churches with brilliant frescos, thus filling 
the holy places with saints and angels, and almost 
with the presence of the Divinity. The modern eccle- 
siastics do the next best thing in obliterating the 
wTctched remnants of what has had its day and done 
its ofiice. These frescos might be looked upon as 
the symbol of the living spirit that made Cathol- 
icism a true religion, and glorified it as long as it did 
live ; now the glory and beauty have departed from 
one and the other. 

My wife, U , and Miss Shepard now set out 

with a cicerone to visit the great Franciscan convent, 
in the church of which are preserved some miracu- 
lous specimens, in fresco and in oils, of early Italian 
art ; but as I had no mind to suffer any further in 

this way, I stayed behind with J and R , 

who were equally weary of these things. 

After they were gone we took a ramble through 
the city, but were almost swept away by the violence 



1858.] ITALY. 259 

of the wind, which struggled with me for my hat, and 

whirled R before it like a feather. The people 

in the public square seemed much diverted at our 
predicament, being, I suppose, accustomed to these 
rude blasts in their mountain-home. However, the 
wind blew in momentary gusts, and then became 
more placable till another fit of fury came, and 
passed as suddenly as before. We walked out of 
the same gate through which we had entered, — an 
ancient gate, but recently stuccoed and whitewashed, 
in wretched contrast to the gray, venerable wall 
through which it affords ingress, — and I stood gazing 
at the magnificent prospect of the wide valley be- 
neath. It was so vast that there appeared to be all 
varieties of weather in it at the same instant ; fields 
of sunshine, tracts of storm, — here the coming tem- 
pest, there the departing one. It was a picture of 
the world on a vast canvas, for there was -rural life 
and city life within the great expanse, and the whole 
set in a frame of mountains, — the nearest bold and 
distinct, with the rocky ledges showing through their 
sides, the distant ones blue and dim, — so far stretched 
this broad valley. 

When I had looked long enough, — no, not long 
enough, for it would take a great while to read that 
page, — we returned within the gate, and we clam- 
bered up, past the Cathedral and into the narrow 
streets above it. The aspect of eveiything was 
immeasurably old ; a thousand years would be but 
a middle age for one of those houses, built so mas- 
sively with huge stones and solid arches, that I do 



2^0 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

not see how they are ever to tumble down, or to be 
less fit for human habitation than they are now. The 
streets crept between them, and beneath arched pas- 
sages, and up and down steps of stone or ancient 
brick, for it would be altogether impossible for a 
carriage to ascend above the Grand Piazza, though 
possibly a donkey or a chairman's mule might find 
foothold. The city seems like a stony growth out 
of the hillside, or a fossilized city, — so old and singu- 
lar it is, without enough life and juiciness in it to 
be susceptible of decay. An earthquake is the only 
chance of its ever being ruined, beyond its present 
ruin. Nothing is more strange than to think that 
this now dead city — dead, as regards the purposes 
for which men live nowadays — was, centuries ago, 
the seat and birthplace almost of art, the only art 
in which the beautiful part of the human mind then 
developed itself. How came that flower to grow 
among these wild mountains 1 I do not conceive, 
however, that the people of Assisi were ever much 
more enlightened or cultivated on the side of art 
than they are at present. The ecclesiastics were 
then the only patrons; and the flower grew here 
because there was a great ecclesiastical garden in 
which it was sheltered and fostered. But it is very 
curious to think of Assisi, a school of art within, and 
mountain and wilderness without. 

My wife and the rest of the party returned from 
the convent before noon, delighted with what they 
had seen, as I was delighted not to have seen it. 
We ate our deje^inery and resumed our journey. 



1858.] ITALY. 261 

passing beneath the great convent, after emerging 
from the gate opposite to that of our entrance. The 
edifice made a very good spectacle, being of great 
extent, and standing on a double row of high and 
narrow arches, on which it is built up from the de- 
clivity of the hill. 

We soon reached the Church of St. Mary of the 
Angels, which is a modern structure, and very 
spacious, built in place of one destroyed by an 
earthquake. It is a fine church, opening out a 
magnificent space in its nave and aisles; and be- 
neath the great dome stands the small old chapel, 
with its rude stone walls, in which St. Francis 
founded his order. This chapel and the dome appear 
to have been the only portions of the ancient church 
that were not destroyed by the earthquake. The 
dwelling of St. Francis is said to be also preserved 
within the church ; but we did not see it, unless it 
were a little dark closet into which we squeezed 
to see some frescos by La Spagna. It had an old 

wooden door, of which U picked off a little bit 

of a chip, to serve as a relic. There is a fresco in 
the church, on the pediment of the chapel, by Over- 
beck, representing the Assumption of the Virgin. 
It did not strike me as wonderfully fine. The other 
pictures, of which there were many, were modem, 
and of no great merit. 

We pursued our way, and came, by and by, to the 
foot of the high hill on which stands Perugia, and 
which is so long and steep that Gaetano took a yoke 
of oxen to aid his horses in the ascent. We all. 



2G2 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

except my wife, walked a part of the way up, and I 

myself, with J for my companion, kept on even 

to the city gate, — a distance, I should think, of two or 
three miles, at least. The lower part of the road was 
on the edge of the hill, with a narrow valley on our 
left ; and as the sun had now broken out, its verdure 
and fertility, its foliage and cultivation, shone forth in 
miraculous beauty, as green as England, as bright as 
only Italy. Perugia appeared above us, crowning a 
mighty hill, the most picturesque of cities ; and the 
higher we ascended, the more the view opened before 
us, as we looked back on the course that we had trav- 
ersed, and saw the wide valley, sweeping down and 
spreading out, bounded afar by mountains, and sleep- 
ing in sun and shadow. No language nor any art of 
the pencil can give an idea of the scene. When God 
expressed himself in the landscape to mankind, he 
did not intend that it should be translated into any 
tongue save his own immediate one. J mean- 
while, whose heart is now wholly in snail-shells, was 
rummaging for them among the stones and hedges 
by the roadside ; yet, doubtless, enjoyed the prospect 
more than he knew. The coach lagged far behind 
us, and when it came up, we entered the gate, where 
a soldier appeared, and demanded my passport. We 
drove to the Grand Hotel de France, which is near 
the gate, and two fine little boys ran beside the 
carriage, well dressed and well looking enough to 
have been a gentleman's sons, but claiming Gaetano 
for their father. He is an inhabitant of Perugia, 
and has therefore reached his own home, though we 



1858.] ITALY. 263 

are still little more than midway to our journey's 
end. 

Our hotel proves, thus far, to be the best that we 
have yet met with. We are only in the outskirts of 
Perugia ; the bulk of the city, where the most inter- 
esting churches and the public edifices are situated, 

being far above us on the hill. My wife, U , Miss 

Shepard, and R streamed forth immediately, and 

saw a church; but J , who hates them, and I 

remained behind; and, for my part, I added several 
pages to this volume of scribble. 

This morning was as bright as morning could be, 
even in Italy, and in this transparent mountain 
atmosphere. We . at first declined the services of a 
cicerone, and went out in the hopes of finding our 
way to whatever we wished to see, by our own 
instincts. This proved to be a mistaken hope, how- 
ever; and we wandered about the upper city, much 
persecuted by a shabby old man who wished to guide 
us ; so, at last, Miss Shepard went back in quest of 
the cicerone at the hotel, and, meanwhile, we climbed 
to the summit of the hill of Perugia, and, leaning over 
a wall, looked forth upon a most magnificent view of 
mountain and valley, terminating in some peaks, 
lofty and dim, which surely must be the Apennines. 
There again a young man accosted us, offering to 
guide us to the Cambio or Exchange; and as this 
was one of the places which we especially wished to 
see, we accepted his services. By the by, I ought to 
have mentioned that we had already entered a church 
(San Luigi, I believe), the interior of which we found 



264 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

very impressive, dim with the light of stained and 
painted windows, insomuch that it at first seemed 
ahuost dark, and we could only see the bright 
twinkling of the tapers at the shrines ; but, after a 
few minutes, we discerned the tall octagonal pillars 
of the nave, marble, and supporting a beautiful roof 
of crossed arches. The church was neither Gothic 
nor classic, but a mixture of both, and most likely 
barbarous ; yet it had a grand effect in its tinted twi- 
light, and convinced me more than ever how desir- 
able it is that religious edifices should have painted 
windows. 

The door of the Cambio proved to be one that we 
had passed several times, while seeking for it, and was 
very near the church just mentioned, which fronts on 
one side of the same piazza. We were received by 
an old gentleman, who appeared to be a public 
officer, and found ourselves in a small room, wain- 
scoted with beautifully carved oak, roofed with a 
coved ceiling, painted with symbols of the planets, 
and arabesqued in rich designs by Raphael, and 
lined with splendid frescos of subjects, scriptural 
and historical, by Perugino. When the room was in 
its first gloiy, I can conceive that the world had not 
elsewhere to show, within so small a space, such mag- 
nificence and beauty as were then displayed here. 
Even now, I enjoyed (to the best of my belief, for we 
can never feel sure that we are not bamboozling our- 
selves in such matters) some real pleasure in what I 
saw ; and especially seemed to feel, after all these 
ages, the old painter's devout sentiment still breathing 



1(858.] ITALY. 2G5 

forth from the religious pictures, the work of a hand 
that had so long been dust. 

When we had looked long at these, the old gentle- 
man led us into a chapel, of the same size as the 
former room, and built in the same fashion, wain- 
scoted likewise with old oak. The walls were also 
frescoed, entirely frescoed, and retained more of their 
original brightness than those we had already seen, 
although the pictures were the production of a some- 
what inferior hand, a pupil of Perugino. They seemed 
to be very striking, however, not the less so, that one 
of them provoked an unseasonable smile. It was the 
decapitation of John the Baptist ; and this holy per- 
sonage was represented as still on his knees, with his 
hands clasped in prayer, although the executioner 
was already depositing the head in a charger, and the 
blood was spouting from the headless trunk, directly, 
as it were, into the face of the spectator. 

While we were in the outer room, the cicerone who 
first offered his services at the hotel had come in ; so 
we paid our chance guide, and expected him to take 
his leave. It is characteristic of this idle country, 
however, that if you once speak to a person, or con- 
nect yourself with him by the slightest possible tie, 
you will hardly get rid of him by anything short of 
main force. He still lingered in the room, and was 
still there when I came away ; for, having had as 
many pictui:es as I could digest, I left my wife and 

U with the cicerone, and set out on a ramble 

with J . We plunged from the upper city down 

through some of the strangest passages that ever 

VOL. I, 12 



266 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

were called streets; some of them, indeed, being 
arched all over, and, going down into the unknown 
darkness, looked like caverns ; and we followed one 
of them doubtfully, till it opened out upon the light. 
The houses on each side were divided only by a pace 
or two, and communicated with one another, here and 
.thercj by arched passages. They looked very ancient, 
and may have been inhabited by Etruscan princes, 
judging from the massiveness of some of the founda- 
tion stones. The present inhabitants, nevertheless, 
are by no means princely, — shabby men, and the care- 
worn wives and mothers of the people, — one of whom 
was guiding a child in leading-strings through these 
aiitique alleys, where hundreds of generations have 
trod before those little feet. Finally we came out 
through a gateway, the same gateway at which we 
entered last night. 

I ought to have mentioned, in the narrative of 
yesterday, that we crossed the Tiber shortly before 
reaching Perugia, already a broad and rapid stream, 
and already distinguished by the same turbid and 
mud-puddly quality of water that we see in it at 
Rome. I think it will never be so disagreeable to 
me hereafter, now that I find this turbidness to be 
its native color, and not (like that of the Thames) 
accruing from city sewers or any impurities of the 
lowlands. • 

A^ I now remember, the small Chapel of Santa 
Maria degli Angeli seems to have been originally the 
house of St. Francis. 
^ May 2^th. — This morning we visited the Church of 



1858.] ITALY. 267 

the Domenicans, where we saw some quaint pictures 
by Fra Angelico, with a good deal of religious sincerity 
in them ; also a picture of St. Columbo by Perugino, 
which unquestionably is very good. To confess the 
truth, I took more interest in a fair Gothic monument, 
in white marble, of Pope Benedict XII., representing 
him reclining under a canopy, while two angels draw 
aside the curtain, the canopy being supported by 
twisted columns, richly ornamented. I like this over- 
flow and gratuity of device with which Gothic sculp- 
ture works out its designs, after seeing so much of the 
simplicity of classic art in marble. 

We then tried to find the Church of San Pietro in 
Martire, but without success, although every person 
of whom we inquired immediately attached himself or 
herself to us, and could hardly be got rid of by any 
efforts on our part. Nobody seemed to know the 
church we wished for, but all directed us to another 
Church of San Pietro, which contains nothing of inter- 
est ; whereas the right church is supposed to contain 
a celebrated picture by Perugino. 

Finally, we ascended the hill and the city proper of 
Perugia (for our hotel is in one of the suburbs), and 

J and I set out on a ramble about the city. It 

was market-day, and the principal piazza, with the 
neighboring streets, was crowded with people 

The best part of Perugia, that in which the grand 
piazzas and the principal public edifices stand, seems 
to be a nearly level plateau on the summit of 
the hill ; but it is of no very great extent, and the 
streets rapidly run downward on either side. J 



268 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

and I followed one of these descending streets, and 
were led a long way by it, till we at last emerged from 
one of the gates of the city, and had another view 
of the mountains and valleys, the fertile and sunny 
wilderness in which this ancient civilization stands. 

On the right of the gate there was a rude country- 
path, partly overgrown with grass, bordered by a 
hedge on one side, and on the other by the gray city 
wall, at the base of which the tract kept onward. We 
followed it, hoping that it would lead us to some 
other gate by which we might re-enter the city ; but 
it soon grew so indistinct and broken, that it was 
evidently on the point of melting into somebody's 
olive-orchard or wheat-fields or vineyards, all of which 
lay on the other side of the hedge ; and a kindly old 
woman of whom I inquired told me (if I rightly under- 
stood her Italian) that I should find no further passage 
in that direction. So we turned back, much broiled 
in the hot sun, and only now and then relieved by the 
shadow of an angle or a tower. 

A lame beggar-man sat by the gate, and as we 

passed him J gave him two baiocchi (which he 

himself had begged of me to buy an orange with), and 
was loaded with the pauper's prayers and benedictions 
as we entered the city. A great many blessings can 
be bought for very little money anywhere in Italy ; 
and whether they avail anything or no, it is pleasant 
to see that the beggars have gratitude enough to 
bestow them in such abundance. 

Of all beggars I think a little fellow, who rode 
beside our carriage on a stick, his bare feet scampering 



1858.] ITALY. 269 

merrily, while he managed his steed with one hand, 
and held out the other for charity, howling piteously 
the while, amused me most. 



PASSIGNANO. 

May 2^th. — We left Perugia at about three 
o'clock to-day, and went down a pretty steep descent ; 
but I have no particular recollection of the road till it 
again began to descend, before reaching the village of 
Mugione. We all, except my wife, walked up the 
long hill, while the vetturo was dragged after us with 
the aid of a yoke of oxen. Arriving first at the 
village, I leaned over the wall to admire the beautiful 
paese ("le bel piano," as a peasant called it, who 
made acquaintance with me) that lay at the foot of 
the hill, so level, so bounded within moderate limits by 
a frame of hills and ridges that it looked like a green 
lake. In fact, I think it was once a real lake, which 
made its escape from its bed, as I have known some 
lakes to have done in America. 

Passing through and beyond the village, I saw, on 
a height above the road, a half-ruinous tower, with 
great cracks running down its walls, half-way from 
top to bottom. Some little children had mounted the 
hill with us, begging all the way ; they were recruited 
with additional members in the village ; and here, 
beneath the ruinous tower, a madman, as it seemed, 
assaulted us, and ran almost under the carriage-wheels, 
in his earnestness to get a baioccho. Ptidding our- 
selves of these annoyances, we drove on, and, between 



270 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

five and six o'clock, came in sight of the Lake of 
Thrasymene, obtaining our first view of it, I think, m 
its longest extent. There were high hills, and one 
mountain with its head in the clouds, visible on the 
farther shore, and on the horizon beyond it ; but the 
nearer banks were long ridges, and hills of only mod- 
erate height. The declining sun threw a broad sheen 
of brightness over the surface of the lake, so that we 
could not well see it for excess of light ; but had a 
vision of headlands and islands floating about in a 
flood of gold, and blue, airy heights bounding it afar. 
When we first drew near the lake, there was but a 
narrow tract, covered with vines and olives, between 
it and the hill that rose on the other side. As we 
advanced, the tract grew wider, and was very fertile, 
as was the hillside, with wheat-fields, and vines, and 
olives, especially the latter, which, symbol of peace as 
it is, seemed to find something congenial to it in the 
soil stained long ago with blood. Farther onward, 
the space between the lake and hill grew still 
narrower, the road skirting along almost close to the 
water-side ; and when we reached the town of Pas- 
signano there was but room enough for its dirty and 
ugly street to stretch along the shore. I have seldom 
beheld a lovelier scene than that of the lake and the 
landscape around it ; never an uglier one than that of 
this idle and decaying village, where we were imme- 
diately surrounded by beggars of all ages, and by 
men vociferously proposing to row us out upon the 
lake. We declined their offers of a boat, for the 
evening was very fresh and cool, insomuch that I 



1858.] ITALY. 271 

should have liked an outside garment, — a temperature 
that I had not anticipated, so near the beginning of 
June, in sunny Italy. Instead of a row, we took a 
walk through the village, hoping to come upon the 
shore of the lake, in some secluded spot; but an 
incredible number of beggar-children, both boys and 
girls, but more of the latter, rushed out of every door, 
and went along with us, all howling their miserable 
petitions at the same moment. The village street is 
long, and our escort waxed more numerous at every 
step, till Miss Shepard actually counted forty of these 
little reprobates, and more were doubtless added after- 
wards. At first, no doubt, they begged in earnest 
hope of getting some baiocchi ; but, by and by, per- 
ceiving that we had determined not to give them any- 
thing, they made a joke of the matter, and began to 
laugh and to babble, and turn heels over head, still 
keeping about us, like a swarm of flies, and now and 
then begging again with aU their might. There were 
as few pretty faces as I ever saw among the same 
number of children ; and they were as ragged and 
dirty little imps as any in the world, and, moreover, 
tainted the air with a very disagreeable odor from 
their rags and dirt ; rugged and healthy enough, 
nevertheless, and sufficiently intelligent ; certainly 
bold and persevering too ; so that it is hard to say 
what they needed to fit them for success in life. Yet 
they begin as beggars, and no doubt will end so, as all 
their parents and grandparents do ; for in our walk 
through the village, every old woman and many 
younger ones held out their hands for alms, as if they 



272 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

had all been famished. Yet these people kept their 
houses over their heads ; had firesides in winter, I 
suppose, and food out of their little gardens every 
day ; pigs to kill, chickens, olives, wine, and a great 
many things to make life comfortable. The children, 
desperately as they begged, looked in good bodily 
case, and happy enough ; but, certainly, there was a 
look of earnest misery in the faces of some of the old 
women, either genuine or exceedingly well acted. 

I could not bear the persecution, and went into our 
hotel, determining not to venture out again till our 
departure ; at least not in the daylight. My wife, 
and the rest of the family, however, continued their 
walk, and at length were relieved from their little 
pests by three policemen (the very images of those 
in Rome, in their blue, long-skirted coats, cocked 
chapeaux-bras, white shoulder-belts, and swords), who 
boxed their ears, and dispersed them. Meanwhile, 
they had quite driven away all sentimental effu^on 
(of which I felt more, really, than I expected) about 
the Lake of Thrasymene. 

The inn of Passignano promised little from its out- 
ward appearance ; a tall, dark old house, with a stone 
staircase leading us up from one sombre story to an- 
other, into a brick-paved dining-room, with our sleep- 
ing-chambers on each side. There was a fireplace of 
tremendous depth and height, fit to receive big forest- 
logs, and with a queer, double pair of ancient andirons, 
capable of sustaining them ; and in a handful of 
ashes lay a small stick of olive-wood, — a specimen, I 
suppose, of the sort of fuel which had made the chim- 



1858.] ITALY. 273 

ney black, in the course of a good many years. There 
must have been much shivering and misery of cold 
around this fireplace. However, we needed no fire 
now, and there was promise of good cheer in the spec- 
tacle of a man cleaning some lake-fish for our dinner, 
while the poor things flounced and wriggled under the 
knife. 

The dinner made its appearance, after a long while, 
and was most plentiful, .... so that, having meas- 
ured our appetite in anticipation of a paucity of food, 
we had to make more room for such overflowing abun- 
dance. 

When dinner was over, it was already dusk, and 
before retiring I opened the window, and looked out 
on Lake Thrasymene, the margin of which lies just on 
the other side of the narrow village street. The moon 
was a day or two past the full, just a little clipped on 
the edge, but gave light enough to show the lake and 
its nearer shores almost as distinctly as by day ; and 
there being a ripple on the surface of the water, it 
made a sheen of silver over a wide space. 



AREZZO. 

May SOtli. — We started at six o' clock, and left the 
one ugly street of Passignano, before many of the 
beggars were awake. Immediately in the vicinity of 
the village, there is very little space between the lake 
in front and the ridge of hills in the rear; but the 
plain widened as we drove onward, so that the lake 
was scarcely to be seen, or often quite hidden among 
12* R 



274 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

the intervening trees, although we could still discern 
the summits of the mountains that rise far beyond its 
shores. The country was fertile, presenting, on each 
side of the road, vines trained on fig-trees ; wheat- 
fields and olives, in greater abundance than any other 
product. On our right, with a considerable width of 
plain between, was the bending ridge of hills that shut 
in the Roman army, by its close approach to the lake 
at Passignano. In perhaps half an hour's drive, we 
reached the little bridge that throws its arch over the 
Sanguinetto, and alighted there. The stream has but 
about a yard's width of water ; and its whole course, 
between the hills and the lake, might well have been 
reddened and swollen with the blood of the multitude 
of slain Romans. Its name put me in mind of the 
Bloody Brook at Deerfield, where a company of Massa- 
chusetts men were massacred by the Indians. 

The Sanguinetto flows over a bed of pebbles ; and 

J crept under the bridge, and got one of them 

for a memorial, while U , Miss Shepard, and R 

plucked some olive twigs and oak leaves, and made 
them into wreaths together, — symbols of victory and 
peace. The tower, which is traditionally named after 
Hannibal, is seen on a height that makes part of the 
line of enclosing hills. It is a large, old castle, appar- 
ently of the Middle Ages, with a square front, and a 
battlemented sweep of wall. The town of Torres (its 
name, I think), where Hannibal's main army is sup- 
posed to have lain while the Romans came through 
the pass, was in full view ; and I could understand 
the plan of the battle better than any system of mili- 



1858.] ITALY. 275 

tary operations which I have hitherto tried to fathom. 
Both last night and to-day, I found myself stirred 
more sensibly than I expected by the influences of 
this scene. The old battle-field is still fertile in 
thoughts and emotions, though it is so many ages 
since the blood spilt there has ceased to make the 
grass and flowers grow more luxuriantly. I doubt 
whether I should feel so much on the field of Saratoga 
or Monmouth; but these old classic battle-fields be- 
long to the whole world, and each man feels as if 
his own forefathers fought them. Mine, by the by, if 
they fought them at all, must have been on the side 
of Hannibal; for, certainly, I sympathized with him, 
and exulted in the defeat of the Romans on their own 
soil. They excite much the same emotion of general 
hostility that the English do. Byron has written some 
very fine stanzas on the battle-field, — not so good as 
others that he has written on classical scenes and sub- 
jects, yet wonderfully impressing his own perception 
of the subject on the reader. Whenever he has to 
deal with a statue, a ruin, a battle-field, he pounces 
upon the topic like a vulture, and tears out its heart 
in a twinkling, so that there is nothing more to be 
said. 

If I mistake not, our passport was examined by 
the papal officers at the last custom-house in the 
pontifical territory, before we traversed the path 
through which the Roman army marched to its de- 
struction. Lake Thrasymene, of which we took our 
last view, is not deep set among the hills, but is 
bordered by long ridges, with loftier mountains re- 



276 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

ceding into the distance. It is not to be compared 
to Windermere or Loch Lomond for beauty, nor with 
Lake Champlain and many a smaller lake in my own 
country, none of which, I hope, will ever become so 
historically interesting as this famous spot. A few 
miles onward our passport was countersigned at the 
Tuscan custom-house, and our luggage permitted to 
pass without examination on payment of a fee of nine 
or ten pauls, besides two pauls to the porters. There 
appears to be no concealment on the part of the 
officials in thus waiving the exercise of their duty, 
and I rather imagine that the thing is recognized and 
permitted by their superiors. At all events, it is 
very convenient for the traveller. 

We saw Cortona, sitting, like so many other cities 
in this region, on its hill, and arrived about noon at 
Arezzo, which also stretches up a high hillside, and 
is surrounded, as they all are, by its walls or the re- 
mains of one, with a fortified gate across every en- 
trance. 

I remember one little village, somewhere in the 
neighborhood of the Clitumnus, which we entered by 
one gateway, and, in the course of two minutes at the 
utmost, left by the opposite one, so diminutive was 
this walled town. Everything hereabouts bears traces 
of times when war was the prevalent condition, and 
peace only a rare gleam of sunshine. 

At Arezzo we have put up at the Hotel Koyal, 
which has the appearance of a grand old house, and 
proves to be a tolerable inn enough. After lunch, 
we wandered forth to see the town, which did not 



1858.] ITALY. 277 

greatly interest me after Perugia, being much more 
modern and less picturesque in its aspect. We went 
to the Cathedral, — a Gothic edifice, but not of strik- 
ing exterior. As the doors were closed, and not to be 
opened till three o'clock, we seated ourselves under 
the trees, on a high, grassy space surrounded and 
intersected with gravel-walks, — a public promenade, 
in short, near the Cathedral ; and after resting our- 
selves here we went in search of Petrarch's house, 
which Murray mentions as being in this neighbor- 
hood. We inquired of several people, who knew 
nothing about the matter ; one woman misdirected 
us, out of mere fun, I believe, for she afterwards met 
us and asked how we had succeeded. But finally, 

through 's enterprise and perseverance, we found 

the spot, not a stone's-throw from where we had been 
sitting. 

Petrarch's house stands below the promenade which 
I have just mentioned, and within hearing of the 
reverberations between the strokes of the Cathedral 
bell. It is two stories high, covered with a light- 
colored stucco, and has not the slightest appearance 
of antiquity, no more than many a modern and 
modest dwelling-house in an American city. Its 
only remarkable feature is a pointed arch of stone, 
let into the plastered wall, and forming a framework 
for the doorway. I set my foot on the door-steps, 

ascended them, and Miss Shepard and J gathered 

some weeds or blades of grass that grew in the chinks 
between the steps. There is a long inscription on a 
slab of marble set in the front of the house, as is the 



278 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

fashion in Arezzo when a house has been the birth- 
place or residence of a distinguished man. 

Right opposite Petrarch's birth-house — and it must 
have been the well whence the water was drawn that 
first bathed him — is a well which Boccaccio has in- 
troduced into one of his stories. It is surrounded 
with a stone curb, octagonal in shape, and evidently 
as ancient as Boccaccio's time. It has a wooden 
cover, through which is a square opening, and look- 
ing down I saw my own face in the water far be- 
neath. 

There is no familiar object connected with daily 
life so interesting as a well ; and this well of old 
Arezzo, whence Petrarch had drank, around which 
he had played in his boyhood, and which Boccaccio 
has made famous, really interested me more than the 
Cathedral. It lies right under the pavement of the 
street, under the sunshine, without any shade of trees 
about it, or any grass, except a little that grows in 
the crevices of its stones ; but the shape of its stone- 
work would make it a pretty object in an engraving. 
As I lingered round it I thought of my own town- 
pump in old Salem, and wondered whether my towns- 
people would ever point it out to strangers, and 
whether the stranger would gaze at it with any 
degree of such interest as I felt in Boccaccio's well. 
0, certainly not ; but yet I made that humble town- 
pump the most celebrated structure in the good town. 
A thousand and a thousand people had pumped there, 
merely to water oxen or fill their teakettles; but 
when once I grasped the handle, a rill gushed forth 



1858.] ITALY. 279 

that meandered as far as Eugiand, as far as India, 
besides tasting pleasantly in every town and village 
of our own country. I like to think of this, so long 
after I did it, and so far from home, and am not 
without hopes of some kindly local remembrance on 
this score. 

Petrarch's house is not a separate and insulated 
building, but stands in contiguity and connection 
with other houses on each side ; and all, when I saw 
them, as well as the w^ole street, extending down 
the slope of the hill, had the bright and sunny aspect 
of a modem town. 

As the Cathedral was not yet open, and as J 

and I had not so much patience as my wife, we left 
her and Miss Shepard, and set out to return to the 
hotel. We lost our way, however, and finally had to 
return to the Cathedral, to take a fresh start ; and as 
the door was now open we went in. We found the 
Cathedral very stately with its great arches, and 
darkly magnificent with the dim rich light coming 
through its painted windows, some of which are 
reckoned the most beautiful that the whole world has 
to show. The hues are far more brilliant than those 
of any painted glass I saw in England, and a great 
wheel window looks like a constellation of many- 
colored gems. The old English glass gets so smoky 
and dull with dust, that its pristine beauty cannot 
any longer be even imagined ; nor did I imagine it 
till I saw these Italian windows. We saw nothing of 
my wife and Miss Shepard ; but found afterwards 
that they had been much annoyed by the attentions 



280 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. 

of a priest who wished to show them the Cathedral, 
till they finally told him that they had no money with 
them, when he left them without another word. The 
attendants in churches seem to be quite as venal as 
most other Italians, and, for the sake of their little 
profit, they do not hesitate to interfere with the great 
purposes for which their churches were built and 
decorated; hanging curtains, for instance, before all 
the celebrated pictures, or hiding them away in the 
sacristy, so that they cannot be seen without a fee. 

Returning to th^ hotel, we looked out of the 
window, and, in the street beneath, there was a very 
busy scene, it being Sunday, and the whole popula- 
tion, apparently, being astir, — promenading up and 
down the smooth flagstones, which made the breadth 
of the street one sidewalk, or at their windows, or 
sitting before their doors. 

The vivacity of the population in these parts is 
very striking, after the gravity and lassitude of 
Rome ; and the air was made cheerful with the talk 
and laughter of hundreds of voices. I think the 
women are prettier than the Roman maids and 
matrons, who, as I think I have said before, have 
chosen to be very uncomely since the rape of their 
ancestresses, by way of wreaking a terrible spite and 
revenge. 

I have nothing more to say of Arezzo, except that, 
finding the ordinary wine very bad, as black as ink, 
and tasting as if it had tar and vinegar in it, we 
called for a bottle of Monte Pulciano, and were ex- 
ceedingly gladdened and mollified thereby. 



1S58.] ITALY. , 281 

mcisA. 

We left Arezzo earty on Monday morning, the sun 
throwing the long shadows of the trees across the 
road, which at first, after we had descended the hill, 
lay over a plain. As the morning advanced, or as 
we advanced, the country grew more hilly. We saw 
many bits of rustic life, — such as old women tending 
pigs or sheep by the roadside, and spinning with a 
distaff; women sewing under trees, or at their own 
doors; children leading goats, tied by the horns, 
while they browse ; sturdy, sunburnt creatures, in 
petticoats, but otherwise manlike, at work side by 
side wdth male laborers in the fields. The broad- 
brimmed, high-crowned hat of Tuscan straw is the 
customary female head-dress, and is as unbecoming 
as can possibly be imagined, and of little use, one 
would suppose, as a shelter from the sun, the brim 
continually blowing upward from the face. Some of 
the elder women wore black felt hats, likewise broad- 
brimmed ; and the men wore felt hats also, shaped a 
good deal like a mushroom, with hardly any brim at 
all. The scenes in the villages through which we 
passed were very lively and characteristic, all the 
population seeming to be out of doors : some at the 
butcher's shop, others at the well ; a tailor sewing in 
the open air, with a young priest sitting sociably 
beside him; children at play; women mending 
clothes, embroidering, spinning with the distaff at 
their own door-steps ; many idlers, letting the pleas- 
ant morning p^ss in the sweet-do-nothing; all as- 



282 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [lS58. 

sembling in the street, as in the common room of one 
large household, and thus brought close together, and 
made familiar with one another, as they can never be 
in a different system of society. As usual, along the 
road, we passed multitudes of shrines, where the 
Virgin was painted in fresco, or sometimes repre- 
sented in bas-reliefs, within niches, or under more 
spacious arches. It would be a good idea to place a 
comfortable and shady seat beneath all these wayside 
shrines, where the wayfarer might rest himself, and 
thank the Virgin for her hospitality; nor can I be- 
lieve that it would offend her, any more than other 
incense, if he were to regale himself, even in such 
consecrated spots, with the fragrance of a pipe or 
cigar. 

In the wire-work screen, before many of the shrines, 
hung offerings of roses and other flowers, some wilted 
and withered, some fresh with that morning's dew, 
some that never bloomed and never faded, — being 
artificial. I wonder that they do not plant rose-trees 
and all kinds of fragrant and flowering shrubs under 
the shrines, and twine and wreathe them all around, 
so that the Virgin may dwell within a bower of per- 
petual freshness ; at least put flower-pots, with living 
plants, into the niche. There are many things in the 
customs of these people that might be made very 
beautiful, if the sense of beauty were as much alive 
now as it must have been when these customs were 
first imagined and adopted. 

I must not forget, among these little descriptive 
items, the spectacle of women and girls bearing huge 



1858.] ITALY. 283 

bundles of twigs and shrubs, or grass, with scarlet 
poppies and blue flowers intermixed ; the bundles 
sometimes so huge as almost to hide the woman's 
figure from head to heel, so that she looked like a 
locomotive mass of verdure arid flowers ; sometimes 
reaching only half-way down her back, so as to show 
the crooked knife slung behind, with which she had 
been reaping this strange- harvest-sheaf. A Pre- 
Raphaelite painter — the one, for instance, who paint- 
ed the heap of autumnal leaves, which we saw at the 
Manchester Exhibition — would find an admirable 
subject in one of these girls, stepping with a free, 
erect, and graceful carriage, her burden oil her head; 
and the miscellaneous herbage and flowers would 
give him all the scope he could desire for minute and 
various delineation of nature. 

The country houses which we passed had some- 
times Open galleries or arcades on the second story 
and above, where the inhabitants might perform their 
domestic labor in the shade and in the air. The 
houses were often ancient, and most picturesquely 
time-stained, the plaster dropping in spots from the 
old brickwork ; others were tinted of pleasant and 
cheerful hues ; some were frescoed with designs in 
arabesques, or with imaginary windows ; some had 
escutcheons of arms painted on the front. Wherever 
there was a pigeon-house, a flight of doves were 
represented as flying into the holes, doubtless for the 
hivitation and encouragement of the real birds. 

Gnce or twice I saw a bush stuck up before the 
door of what seemed to be a wine-shop. If so, it is 



284 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

the ancient custom, so long disused in England, and 
alluded to in the proverb, " Good wine needs no 
bush." Several times we saw grass spread to dry on 
the road, covering half the track, and concluded it to 
have been cut by the roadside for the winter forage of 
his ass by some poor peasant, or peasant's wife, who 
had no grass land, except the margin of the public 
way. 

A beautiful feature of the scene to-day, as the pre- 
ceding day, were the vines growing on fig-trees (1),* and 
often wreathed in rich festoons from one tree to an- 
other, by and by to be hung with clusters of purple 
grapes. I suspect the vine is a pleasanter object of 
sight under this mode of culture than it can be in 
countries where it produces a more precious wine, and 
therefore is trained more artificially. Nothing can be 
more picturesque than the spectacle of an old grape- 
vine, with almost a trunk of its own, clinging round 
its tree, imprisoning within its strong embrace the 
friend that supported its tender infancy, converting 
the tree wholly to its own selfish ends, as seemingly 
flexible natures are apt to do, stretching out its 
innumerable arms on every bough, and allowing 
hardly a leaf to sprout except its own. I must not 
yet quit this hasty sketch, without throwing in, both 
in the early morning, and later in the forenoon, the 
mist that dreamed among the hills, and which, now 
that I have called it mist, I feel almost more inclined 
to call light, being so quietly cheerful with the sun- 

* This interrogation-mark must mean that Mr. Hawthorne 
was not sure they were fig-trees. — Ed. 



1858.] ITALY. 285 

shine through it. Put in, now and then, a castle 
on a hill-top ; a rough ravine, a smiling valley ; a 
mountain stream, with a far wider bed than it at 
present needs, and a stone bridge across it, with 
ancient and massive arches; — and I shall say no 
more, except that all these particulars, and many 
better ones which escape me, made up a very pleasant 
whole. 

At about noon we drove into the village of Incisa, 
and alighted at the albergo where we were to lunch. 
It was a gloomy old house, as much like my idea of 
an Etruscan tomb as anything else that I can com- 
pare it to. We passed into a wide and lofty entrance- 
hall, paved with stone, and vaulted with a roof of 
intersecting arches, supported by heavy columns of 
stuccoed-brick, the whole as sombre and dingy as can 
well be. This entrance-hall is not merely the pas- 
sageway into .the inn, but is likewise the carriage- 
house, into which our vettura is wheeled ; and it has, 
on one side, the stable, odorous with the litter of 
horses and cattle, and on the other the kitchen, and a 
common sitting-room. A narrow stone staircase leads 
from it to the dining-room, and chambers above, which 
are paved with brick, and adorned with rude frescos 
instead of paper-hangings. We look out of the 
windows, and ' step into a little iron-railed balcony, 
before the principal window, and observe the scene in 
the village street. The street is narrow, and nothing 
can exceed the tall, grim ugliness of the village 
houses, many of them four stories high, contiguous 
all along, and paved quite across ; so that nature is 



286 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

as completely shut out from the precincts of this little 
town as from the heart of the widest city. The walls 
of the houses are plastered, gray, dilapidated; the 
windows small, some of them drearily closed with 
wooden shutters, others flung wide open, and with 
women's heads protruding, others merely frescoed, 
for a show of light and air. It would be a hideous 
street to look at in a rainy day, or when no human 
life pervaded it. Now it has vivacity enough to keep 
it cheerful. People lounge round the door of the 
albergo, and watch the horses as they drink from a 
stone trough, which is built against the wall of the 
house, and filled with the unseen gush of a spring. 

At first there is a shade entirely across the street, 
and all the within-doors of the village empties itself 
there, and keeps up a babblement that seems quite 
disproportioned even to the multitude of tongues 
that make it. So many words are not spoken in 
a New England village in a whole year as here in 
this single day. People talk about nothing as if 
they were terribly in earnest, and laugh at nothing 
as if it were an excellent joke. 

As the hot noon sunshine encroaches on our side 
of the street, it grows a little more quiet. The 
loungers now confine themselves to the shady margin 
(growing narrower and narrower) of the other side, 
where, directly opposite the albergo, there are two 
cafes and a wine-shop, " vendeta di pane, vino, ed 
altri generi," all in a row with benches before them. 
The benchers joke with the women passing by, and 
are joked with back again. The sun still eats away 



1858.] j^ ITALY. 287 

the shadow inch by inch, beating down with such 
intensity that finally everybody disappears except a 
few passers by. 

Doubtless the village snatches this half-hour for its 
siesta. There is a song, however, inside one of the 
cafes, with a burden in which several voices join. 
A girl goes through the street, sheltered under her 
great bundle of freshly cut grass. By and by the 
song ceases, and two young peasants come out of the 
cafe, a little affected by liquor, in their shirt-sleeves 
and bare feet, with their trousers tucked up. They 
resume their song in the street, and dance along, one's 
arm around his fellow's neck, his own waist grasped 
by the other's arm. They whirl one another quite 
round about, and come down upon their feet. Meet- 
ing a village maid coming quietly along, they dance 
up and intercept her for a moment, but give way to 
her sobriety of aspect. They pass on, and the shadow 
soon begins to spread from one side of the street, 
which presently fills again, and becomes once more, 
for its size, the noisiest place I ever knew. 

We had quite a tolerable dinner at this ugly inn, 
where many preceding travellers had written their 
condemnatory judgments, as well as a few their 
favorable ones, in pencil on the walls of the dining- 
room. 

TO FLORENCE. 

At setting off [from Incisa], we were surrounded by 
beggars as usual, the most interesting of whom were a 
little blind boy and his mother, who had besieged us 



288 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOK% [l858. 

with gentle pertinacity during our whole stay there. 
There was likewise a man with a maimed hand, and 
other hurts or deformities ; also, an old woman who, 
I suspect, only pretended to be blind, keeping her 
eyes tightly squeezed together, but directing her hand 
very accurately where the copper shower was ex- 
pected to fall. Besides these, there were a good 
many sturdy little rascals, vociferating in proportion 
as they needed nothing. It was touching, however, 
to see several persons — themselves beggars for aught 
I know — assisting to hold up the little blind boy's 
tremulous hand, so that he, at all events, might not 
lack the pittance which we had to give. Our dole 
was but a poor one after all, consisting of what 
Roman coppers we had brought into Tuscany with 
us ; and as we drove off, some of the boys ran shout- 
ing and whining after us in the hot sunshine, nor 
stopped till we reached the summit of the hill, which 
rises immediately from the village street. We heard 
Gaetano once say a good thing to a swarm of beggar- 
children, who were infesting us, " Are your fathers all 
deadr' — a proverbial expression, I suppose. The 
pertinacity of beggars does not, I think, excite the in- 
dignation of an Italian, as it is apt to do that of 
Englishmen or Americans. The Italians probably 
sympathize more, though they give less. Gaetano is 
very gentle in his modes of repelling them, and, 
indeed, never interferes at all, as long as there is a 
prospect of their getting anything. 

Immediately after leaving Incisa, we saw the Amo, 
already a considerable river, rushing between deep 



1858.] ITALY. 289 

banks, with the greenish hue of a duck-pond diffused 
through its water. Nevertheless, though the first 
impression was not altogether agreeable, we soon 
became reconciled to this hue, and ceased to think 
it an indication of impurity ; for, in spite of it, the 
river is still to a certain degree transparent, and is, / 
at any rate, a mountain- stream, and comes uncon- 
taminated from its source. The pure, transparent 
brown of the New England rivers is the most beauti- 
ful color ; but I am content that it should be peculiar 
to them. 

Our afternoon's drive was through scenery less 
striking than some which we had traversed, but still 
picturesque and beautiful. We saw deep valleys and 
ravines, with streams at the bottom ; long, wooded 
hillsides, rising far and high, and dotted with white 
dwellings, well towards the summits. By and by, 
we had a distant glimpse of Florence, showing its 
great dome and some of its towers out of a sidelong 
valley, as if we were between two great waves of the 
tumultuous sea of hills ; while, far beyond, rose in 
the distance the blue peaks of three or four of the 
Apennines, just on the remote horizon. There being 
a haziness in the atmosphere, however, Florence was 
little more distinct to us than the Celestial City was 
to Christian and Hopeful, when they spied at it from 
the Delectable Mountains. 

Keeping steadfastly onward, we ascended a winding 
road, and passed a grand villa, standing very high, 
and surrounded with extensive grounds. It must be 
the residence of some great noble j and it has an 

VOL. I. 13 s 



290 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

avenue of poplars or aspens, very light and gay, and 
fit for the passage of the bridal procession, when the 
proprietor or his heir brings home his bride ; while, in 
another direction from the same front of the palace, 
stretches an avenue or grove of cypresses, very long, 
and exceedingly black and dismal, like a train of gigan- 
tic mourners. I have seen few things more striking, 
in the way of trees, than this grove of cypresses. 

From this point we descended, and drove along an 
ugly, dusty avenue, with a high brick-wall on one 
side or both, till we reached the gate of Florence, 
into which we were admitted with as little trouble as 
custom-house officers, soldiers, and policemen can 
possibly give. They did not examine our luggage, 
and even declined a fee, as we had already paid one at 
the frontier custom-house. Thank heaven, and the 
Grand Duke ! 

As we hoped that the Casa del Bello had been taken 
for us, we drove thither in the first place, but found 
that the bargain had not been concluded. As the 
house and studio of Mr. Powers were just on the oppo- 
site side of the street, I went to it, but found him too 
much engrossed to see me at the moment ; so I re- 
turned to the vettura, and we told Gaetano to carry 
us to a hotel. He established us at the Albergo della 

Fontana, a good and comfortable house Mr. 

Powers called in the evening, — a plain personage, 
characterized by strong simplicity and warm kindli- 
ness, with an impending brow, and large eyes, which 
kindle as he speaks. He is gray, and slightly bald, 
but does not seem elderly, nor past his prime. I ac- 



1858.] ITALY. 291 

cept him at once as an honest and trustworthy man, 
and shall not vary from this judgment. Through his 
good offices, the next day, we engaged the Casa del 
Bello, at a rent of fifty dollars a month, and I shall 
take another opportunity (my fingers and head being 
tired now) to write about the house, and Mr. Powers, 
and what appertains to him, and about the beautiful 
city of Florence. At present, I shall only say further, 
that this journey from Rome has been one of the 
brightest and most uncareful interludes of my life ; we 
have all enjoyed it exceedingly, and I am happy that 
our children have it to look back upon. 

June Uh. — At our visit to Powers's studio on Tues- 
day, we saw a marble copy of the fisher-boy holding a 
shell to his ear, and the bust of Proserpine, and two or 
three other ideal busts ; various casts of most of the 
ideal statues and portrait busts which he has executed. 
He talks very freely about his works, and is no excep- 
tion to the rule that an artist is not apt to speak in a 
very laudatory style of a brother artist. He showed 
us a bust of Mr. Sparks by Persico, — a lifeless and 
thoughtless thing enough, to be sure, — and compared 
it with a very good one of the sanie gentleman by 
himself; but his chiefest scorn was bestowed on a 
wretched and ridiculous image of Mr. King, of Ala- 
bama, by Clarke Mills, of which he said he had been 
employed to make several copies for Southern gentle- 
men. The consciousness of power is plainly to be 
seen, and the assertion of it by no means withheld, in 
his simple and natural character ; nor does it give me 
an idea of vanity on his part to see and hear it. He 



292 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

appears to consider himself neglected by his country, — 
by the government of it, at least, — and talks with 
indignation of the byways and political intrigue which, 
he thinks, win the rewards that ought to be bestowed 
exclusively on merit. An appropriation of twenty-five 
thousand dollars was made, some years ago, for a work 
of sculpture by him, to be placed in the Capitol ; but 
the intermediate measures necessary to render it 
effective have been delayed; while the above-men- 
tioned Clarke Mill — certainly the greatest bungler 
that ever botched a block of marble — has received an 
order for an equestrian statue of Washington. Not 
that Mr. Powers is made bitter or sour by these 
wrongs, as he considers them ; he talks of them with 
the frankness of his disposition when the topic comes 
in his way, and is pleasant, kindly, and sunny when 
he has done with it. 

His long absence from our country has made him 
think worse of us than we deserve ; and it is an effect 
of what I myself am sensible, in my shorter exile : 
the most piercing shriek, the wildest yell, and all the 
ugly sounds of popular turmoil, inseparable from the 
life of a republic, being a million times more audible 
than the peaceful hum of prosperity and content 
which is going on all the while. 

He talks of going home, but says that he has been 
talking of it every year since he first came to Italy ; 
and between his pleasant life of congenial labor, and 
his idea of moral deterioration in America, I think it 
doubtful whether he ever crosses the sea again. Like 
most exiles of twenty years, he has lost his native 



1858.] ITALY. 293 

country without finding another; but then it is 
as well to recognize the truth, — that an individ- 
ual country is by no means essential to one's com- 
fort- 
Powers took us into the farthest room, I believe, of 
his very extensive studio, and showed us a statue of 
Washington that has much dignity and stateliness. 
He expressed, however, great contempt for the coat 
and breeches, and masonic emblems, in which he had 
been required to drape the figure. What would he 
do with Washington, the most decorous and respec- 
table personage that ever went ceremoniously through 
the realities of life 1 Did anybody ever see Washing- 
ton nudel It is inconceivable. He bad no naked- 
ness, but I imagine he was born with his clothes on, 
and his hair powdered, and made a stately bow on his 
first appearance in the world. His costume, at all 
events, was a part of his character, and must be dealt 
with by whatever sculptor undertakes to represent 
him. I wonder that so very sensible a man as Powers 
should not see the necessity of accepting drapery, and 
the very drapery of the day, if he will keep his art 
alive. It is his business to idealize the tailor's actual 
work. But he seems to be especially fond of nudity, 
none of his ideal statues, so far as I know them, hav- 
ing so much as a rag of clothes. His statue of Cali- 
fornia, lately finished, and as naked as Yenus, seemed 
to me a very good work ; not an actual woman, capa- 
ble of exciting passion, but evidently a little out of 
the category of human nature. In one hand she holds 
a divining rod. " She says to the emigrants," observed 



294 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

Powers, " ' Here is the gold, if you choose to take it.' " 
But in her face, and in her eyes, very finely expressed, 
there is a look of latent mischief, rather grave than 
playful, yet somewhat impish or sprite-like ; and, in 
the other hand, behind her back, she holds a bunch of 
thorns. Powers calls her eyes Indian. The statue is 
true to the present fact and history of California, and 
includes the age-long truth as respects the " auri sacra 
fames." .... 

When we had looked sufficiently at the sculpture, 
Powers proposed that we should now go across the 
street and see the Casa del Bello. We did so in a 
body, Powers in his dressing-gown and slippers, and 
his wife and daughters without assuming any street 
costume. 

The Casa del Bello is a palace of three pianos, the 
topmost of which is occupied by the Countess of St. 
George, an English lady, and two lower pianos are to 
be let, and we looked at both. The u]3per one would 
have suited me well enough ; but the lower has a 
terrace, with a rustic summer-house over it, and is 
connected with a garden, w^here there are arbors and 
a willow-tree, and a little wilderness of shrubbery and 
roses, with a fountain in the midst. It has likewise 
an immense suite of rooms, round the four sides of a 
small court, spacious, lofty, with frescoed ceilings and 
rich hangings, and abundantly furnished with arm- 
chairs, sofas, marble tables, and great looking-glasses. 
Not that these last are a great temptation, but in our 
wandering life I wished to. be perfectly comfortable 
myself, and to make my family so, for just this sum- 



1858.] ITALY. 295 

mer, and so I have taken the lower piano, the price 
being only fifty dollars per month (entirely furnished, 
even to silver and linen). Certainly this is something 
like the paradise of cheapness we were told of, and 
which we vainly sought in Rome 

To me has been assigned the pleasantest room for 
my study ; and when I like I can overflow into the 
summer-house or an^ arbor, and sit there dreaming 
of a story. The weather is delightful, too warm to 
walk, but perfectly fit to do nothing in, in the cool- 
ness of these great rooms. Every day I shall write a 
little, perhaps, — and probably take a brief nap some- 
where between breakfast and tea, — but go to see 
pictures and statues occasionally, and so assuage and 
mollify myself a little after that uncongenial life of 
the consulate, and before going back to my own hard 
and dusty New England. 

After concluding the arrangement for the Casa del 
Bello, we stood talking a little while with Powers and 
his wife and daughter before the door of the house, for 
they seem so far to have adopted the habits of the 
Florentines as to feel themselves at home on the 
shady side of the street. The out-of-door life and free 
communication with the pavement, habitual apparently 
among the middle classes, reminds me of the plays of 
Moliere and other old dramatists, in which the street 
or the square becomes a sort of common parlor, where 
most of the talk and scenic business of the people is 
carried on. 

June 6th. — For two or three mornings after break- 
fast I have rambled a little about the city till the 



296 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

shade grew narrow beneath the walls of the houses, 
and the heat made it uncomfortable to be in motion. 
To-day 1 went over the Ponte Carraja, and thence 
into and through the heart of the city, looking into 
several churches, in all of which I found people taking 
advantage of the cool breadth of these sacred interiors 
to refresh themselves and say their prayers. Florence 
at first struck me as having the aspect of a very 
new city in comparison with Rome ; but, on closer 
acquaintance, I find that many of the buildings are 
antique and massive, though still the clear atmos- 
phere, the bright sunshine, the light, cheerful hues 
of the stucco, and — as much as anything else,- perhaps 
— the vivacious character of the human life in the 
streets, take away the sense of its being an ancient 
city. The streets are delightful to walk in after so 
many penitential pilgrimages as I have made over 
those little square, uneven blocks of the Roman pave- 
ment, which wear out the boots and torment the soul. 
I absolutely walk on the smooth flags of Florence for 
the mere pleasure of walking, and live in its atmos- 
phere for the mere pleasure of living; and, warm 
as the weather is getting to be, I never feel that 
inclination to sink down in a heap and never stir 
again, which was my dull torment and misery as long 
as I stayed in Rome. I hardly think there can be a 
place in the world where life is more delicious for its 
own simple sake than here. 

I went to-day into the Baptistery, which stands 
near the Duomo, and, like that, is covered externally 
with slabs of black and white marble, now grown 



1858.] ITALY. 297 

brown and yellow with age. The edifice is octagonal, 
and on entering, one immediately thinks of the Pan- 
theon, — the whole space within being free from side 
to side, with a dome above ; but it differs from the 
severe simplicity of the former edifice, being elabo- 
rately ornamented with marble and frescos, and lack- 
ing that great eye in the roof that looks so nobly and 
reverently heavenward from the Pantheon. I did lit- 
tle more than pass through the Baptistery, glancing 
at the famous bronze doors, some perfect and admira- 
ble casts of which I had already seen at the Crystal 
Palace. 

The entrance of the Duomo being just across the 
piazza, I went in there after leaving the Baptistery, 
and was struck anew — for this is the third or fourth 
visit — with the dim grandeur of the interior, lighted 
as it is almost exclusively by painted windows, which 
seem to me worth all the variegated marbles and rich 
cabinet-work of St. Peter's. The Florentine Cathe- 
dral has a spacious and lofty nave, and side-aisles 
divided from it by pillars ; but there are no chapels 
along the aisles, so that there is far more breadth 
and freedom of interior, in proportion to the actual 
space, than is usual in churches. It is woful to think 
how the vast capaciousness within St. Peter's is 
thrown away, and made to seem smaller than it is 
by every possible device, as if on purpose. The 
pillars and walls of this Duomo are of a uniform 
brownish, neutral tint ; the pavement, a mosaic work 
of marble ; the ceiling of the dome itself is covered 
with frescos, which, being very imperfectly lighted, it 
13* 



298 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. 

is impossible to trace out. Indeed, it is but a twilight 
region that is enclosed within the firmament of this 
great dome, which is actually larger than that of St. 
Peter's, though not lifted so high from the pavement. 
But looking at the painted windows, I little cared 
what dimness there might be elsewhere ; for certainly 
the art of man has never contrived any other beauty 
and glory at all to be compared to this. 

The dome sits, as it were, upon three smaller 
domes, — smaller, but still great, — beneath which are 
three vast niches, forming the transepts of the Cathe- 
dral and the tribune behind the high altar. All 
round these hollow, dome-covered arches or niches, 
are high and narrow windows crowded with saints, 
angels, and all manner of blessed shapes, that turn 
the common daylight into a miracle of richness and 
splendor as it passes through their heavenly substance. 
And just beneath the swell of the great central dome 
is a wreath of circular windows quite round it, as 
brilliant as the tall and narrow ones below. It is a 
pity anybody should die without seeing an antique 
painted v/indow, with the bright Italian sunshine 
glowing through it. This is "the dim, religious 
light" that Milton speaks of; but I doubt whether 
he saw these windows when he was in Italy, or any 
but those faded or dusty and dingy ones of the Eng- 
lish cathedrals, else he would have illuminated that 
word " dim " with some epithet that should not chase 
away the dimness, yet should make it shine like a 
million of rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and topazes, — 
bright in themselves, but dim with tenderness and 



1858.] ITALY. 299 

reverence because God himself was shining through 
them. I hate what I have said. 

All the time that I was in the Cathedral the space 
around the high altar, which stands exactly under 
the dome, was occupied by priests or acolytes in 
white garments, chanting a religious service. 

After coming out, I took a view of the edifice from 
a corner of the street nearest to the dome, where it 
and the smaller domes can be seen at once. It is 
greatly more satisfactory than St. Peter's in any view 
I ever had of it, — striking in its outline, with a 
mystery, yet not a bewilderment, in its masses and 
curves and angles, and wrought out with a richness 
of detail that gives the eyes new arches, new galleries, 
new niches, new pinnacles, new beauties, great and 
small, to play with when wearied with the vast whole. 
The hue, black and white marbles, like the Baptistery, 
turned also yellow and brown, is greatly preferable to 
the buff travertine of St. Peter's. 

From the Duomo it is but a moderate street's 
length to the Piazza del Gran Duca, the principal 
square of Florence. It is a very interesting place, 
and has on one side the old Governmental Palace, — 
the Palazzo Vecchio, — where many scenes of historic 
interest have been enacted ; for example, conspir- 
ators have been hanged from its windows, or pre- 
cipitated from them upon the pavement of the square 
below. 

It is a pity that we cannot take as much interest 
in the history of these Italian Republics as in that cf 
England, for the former is much the more picturesque 



3G0 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l85a 

and fuller of curious incident. The sobriety of the 
Anglo-Saxon race — in connection, too, with their 
moral sense — keeps them from doing a great many- 
things that would enliven the page of history ; and 
their events seem to come in great masses, shoved 
along by the agency of many persons, rather than to 
result from individual will and character. A hundred 
plots for a tragedy might be found in Florentine 
history for one in English. 

At one corner of the Palazzo Vecchio is a bronze 
equestrian statue of Cosmo di Medici, the first Grand 
Duke, very stately and majestic; there are other 
marble statues — one of David, by Michael Angelo — 
at each side of the palace door; and entering the 
court I found a rich antique arcade within, surrounded 
by marble pillars, most elaborately carved, support- 
ing arches that were covered with faded frescos. 
I went no farther, but stepped across a little space of 
the square to the Loggio di Lanzi, which is broad 
and noble, of three vast arches, at the end of which, 
T take it, is a part of the Palazzo Uffizzi fronting on 
the piazza. I should call it a portico if it stood 
before the palace door; but it seems to have been 
constructed merely for itself, and as a shelter for 
the people from sun and rain, and to contain some 
fine specimens of sculpture, as well antique as of 
more modern times. Benvenuto Cellini's Perseus 
stands here ; but it did not strike me so much as the 
cast of it in the Crystal Palace. 

A good many people were under these great arches ; 
some of whom were reclining, half or quite asleep, on 



1858.] ITALY. 301 

the marble seats that are built against the back of the 
loggia. A group was reading an edict of the Grand 
Duke, which appeared to have been just posted on a 
board, at the farther end of it ; and I was surprised 
at the interest which they ventured to manifest, and 
the freedom with which they seemed to discuss it. 
A soldier was on guard, and doubtless there were 
spies enough to carry every word that was said to 
the ear of absolute authority. Glancing myself at the 
edict, however, I found it referred only to the further- 
ance of a project, got up among the citizens them- 
selves, for bringing water into the city ; and on such 
topics, I suppose there is freedom of discussion. 

Ju7ie 7th. — Saturday evening we walked with U 

and J into the city, and looked at the exterior of 

the Duomo with new admiration. Since my former 
view of it, I have noticed — which, strangely enough, 
did not strike me before — that the fagade is but a 
great, bare, ugly space, roughly plastered over, with 
the brickwork peeping through it in spots, and a 
faint, almost invisible fresco of colors upon it. This 
front was once nearly finished with an incrustation of 
black and white marble, like the rest of the edifice ; 
but one of the city magistrates, Benedetto Uguacione, 
demolished it, three hundred years ago, with the idea 
of building it again in better style. He failed to do 
so, and ever since, the magnificence of the great 
church has been marred by this unsightly roughness 
of what should have been its richest part; nor is 
there, I suppose, any hope that it will ever be finished 
now. 



302 FKENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

The campanile, or bell-tower, stands within a few 
paces of the Cathedral, but entirely disconnected from 
it, rising to a height of nearly three hundred feet, a 
square tower of light marbles, now discolored by 
time. It is impossible to give an idea of the richness 
of effect produced by its elaborate finish ; the whole 
surface of the four sides, from top to bottom, being 
decorated with all manner of statuesque and architec- 
tural sculpture. It is like a toy of ivory, which some 
ingenious and pious monk might have spent his 
lifetime in adorning with scriptural designs and 
figures of saints ; and when it was finished, seeing 
it so beautiful, he prayed that it might be mirac- 
ulously magnified from the size of one foot to that 
of three hundred. This idea somewhat satisfies me, 
as conveying an impression how gigantesque the 
campanile is in its mass and height, and how minute 
and varied in its detail. Surely these mediaeval 
works have an advantage over the classic. They 
combine the telescope and the microscope. 

The city was all alive in the summer evening, and 
the streets humming with voices. Before the doors 
of the caf^s were tables, at which people were taking 
refreshment, and it went to my heart to see a bottle 
of English ale, some of which was poured foaming 
into a glass; at least it had exactly the amber hue 
and the foam of English bitter ale ; but perhaps it 
may have been merely a Florentine imitation. 

As we returned home over the Arno, crossing the 
Ponte di Santa Trinita, we were struck by the beau- 
tiM scene of the broad, calm river, with the palaces 



1858.] ITALY. 303 

along its shores repeated in it, on either side, and the 
neighboring bridges, too, just as perfect in the tide 
beneath . as in the air above, — a city of dream and 
shadow so close to the actual one. God has a mean- 
ing, no doubt, in putting this spiritual symbol con- 
tinually beside us. 

Along the river, on both sides, as far as we could 
see, there was a row of brilliant lamps, which, in the 
far distance, looked like a cornice of golden light; and 
this also shone as brightly in the river's depths. The 
hues of the evening, in the quarter where the sun had 
gone down, were very soft and beautiful, though not 
so gorgeous as thousands that I have seen in America. 
But I believe I must fairly confess that the Italian 
sky, in the daytime, is bluer and brighter than our 
own, and that the atmosphere has a quality of showing 
objects to better advantage. It is more than mere 
daylight; the magic of moonlight is somehow mixed 
up with it, although it is so transparent a medium of 
light. 

Last evening, Mr. Powers called to see us, and sat 
down to talk in a friendly and familiar way. I do not 
know a man of more facile intercourse, nor with whom 
one so easily gets rid of ceremony. His conversation, 
too, is interesting. He talked, to begin with, about 
Italian food, as poultry, mutton, beef, and their lack 
of savoriness as compared with our own; and men- 
tioned an exquisite dish of vegetables which they 
prepare from squash or pumpkin blossoms ; likewise 
another dish, which it will be well for us to remember 
when we get back to the Wayside, where we are over- 



304 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

run with acacias. It consists of the acacia-blossoms 
in a certain stage of their development fried in olive-oil. 
I shall get the receipt from Mrs. Powers, and mean to 
deserve well of my country by first trying it, and then 
making it known ; only I doubt whether American 
lard, or even butter, will produce the dish quite se 
delicately as fresh Florence oil. 

Meanwhile, I like Powers all the better, because he 
does not put his life wholly into marble. We had 
much talk, nevertheless, on matters of sculpture, for 
he drank a cup of tea with us, and stayed a good 
while. 

He passed a condemnatory sentence on classic busts 
in general, saying that they were conventional, and not 
to be depended upon as true representations of the 
persons. He particularly excepted none but the bust 
of Caracalla ; and, indeed, everybody that has seen this 
bust must feel the justice of the exception, and so be 
the more inclined to accept his opinion about the rest. 
There are not more than half a dozen — that of Cato 
the Censor among the others — in regard to which I 
should like to ask his judgment individually. He 
seems to think the faculty of making a bust an ex- 
tremely rare one. Canova put his own likeness into 
all the busts he made. Greenough could not make a 
good one ; nor Crawford, nor Gibson. Mr. Harte, he 
observed, — an American sculptor, now a resident in 
Florence, — is the best man of the day for making 
busts. Of course, it is to be presumed that he excepts 
himself; but I would not do Powers the great injustice 
to imply that there is the slightest professional jeal- 



1858.] ITALY. 305 

ousy in his estimate of what others have done, or are 
now doing, in his own art. If he saw a better man 
than himself, he would recognize him at once, and tell 
the world of him ; but he knows well enough that, in 
this line, there is no better, and probably none so 
good. It would not accord with the simplicity of his 
character to blink a fact that stands so broadly be- 
fore him. 

We asked him what he thought of Mr. Gibson's 
practice of coloring his statues, and he quietly and 
slyly said that he himself had made wax figures in 
his earlier days, but had left off making them now. 
In short, he objected to the practice wholly, and said 
that a letter of his on the subject had been published 
in the London "Athenaeum," and had given great offence 
to some of Mr. Gibson's friends. It appeared to me, 
however, that his arguments did not apply quite 
fairly to the case, for he seems to think Gibson aims 
at producing an illusion of life in the statue, whereas 
I think his object is merely to give warmth and 
softness to the snowy marble, and so bring it a little 
nearer to our hearts and sympathies. Even so far, 
nevertheless, I doubt whether the practice is de- 
fensible, and I was glad to see that Powers scorned, 
at all events, the argument drawn from the use of 
color by the antique sculptors, on which Gibson 
relies so much. It might almost be implied, from 
the contemptuous way in which Powers spoke of 
color, that he considers it an impertinence on the 
face of visible nature, and would rather the world 
had been made without it ; for he said that every- 



306 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

thing in intellect or feeling can be expressed as per-^ 
fectly, or more so, by the sculptor in colorless 
marble, as by the painter with all the resources of 
his palette. I asked him whether he could model 
the face of Beatrice Cenci from Guido's picture so as 
to retain the subtle expression, and he said he could, 
for that the expression depended entirely on the 
drawing, "the picture being a badly colored thing." 
I inquired whether he could model a blush, and he 
said " Yes " ; and that he had once proposed to an 
artist to express a blush in marble, if he would ex- 
press it in picture. On consideration, I believe one 
to be as impossible as the other ; the life and reality 
of the blush being in its tremulousness, coming and 
going. It is lost in a settled red just as much as in a 
settled paleness, and neither the sculptor nor painter 
can do more than represent the circumstances of 
attitude and expression that accompany the blush. ' 
There was a great deal of truth in what Powers said 
about this matter of color, and in one of our inter- 
minable New England winters it ought to comfort 
us to think how little necessity there is for any hue 
but that of the snow. 

Mr. Powers, nevertheless, had brought ns a bunch 
of beautiful roses, and seemed as capable of appre- 
ciating their delicate blush as we were. The best 
thing he said against the use of color in marble 
was to the effect that the whiteness removed the ob- 
ject represented into a sort of spiritual region, and so 
gave chaste permission to those nudities which would 
otherwise suggest immodesty. Ihave myself felt the 



1858.] ITALY. 307 

truth of this in a certain sense of shame as I looked 
at Gibson's tinted Venus. 

He took his leave at about eight o'olock, being to 
make a call on the Bryants, who are at the Hotel de 
New York, and also on Mrs. Browning, at Casa 
Guidi. 



END OP VOL. I. 




See page 215. 



PASSAGES 



THE FRENCH AND ITALIAN 
NOTE-BOOKS 



VOL. II. 



PASSAGES 



HAWTHORNE'S NOTE-BOOKS IN FRANCE 
AND ITALY. 



FLORENCE — continued, 

June Sth. — I went this morning to the Uffizzi 
gallery. The entrance is from the great court of the 
palace, which communicates with Lung' Amo at one 
end, and with the Grand Ducal Piazza at the other. 
The gallery is in the upper story of the palace, and 
in the vestibule are some busts of the princes and 
cardinals of the Medici family, — none of them beau- 
tiful, one or two so ugly as to be ludicrous, especially 
one who is all but buried in his own wig. I at first 
travelled slowly through the whole extent of this 
long, long gallery, which occupies the entire length 
of the palace on both sides of the court., and is full 
of sculpture and pictures. The latter, being opposite 
to the light, are not seen to the best advantage ; but 
it is the most perfect collection, in a chronological 
series, that I have seen, comprehending specimens of 
all the masters since painting began to be an art. 
Here are Giotto, and Cimabue, and Botticelli, and 
Fra Angelico, and Filippo Lippi, and a hundred 

VOL. II. 1 A 



2 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

others, who have haunted me in churches and gal- 
leries ever since I have been in Italy, and who ought 
to interest me a great deal more than they do. Occa- 
sionally to-day I was sensible of a certain degree of 
emotion in looking at an old picture ; as, for example, 
by a large, dark, ugly picture of Christ bearing the 
cross and sinking beneath it, when, somehow or other, 
a sense of his agony and the fearful wrong that man- 
kind did (and does) its Redeemer, and the scorn of his 
enemies, and the sorrow of those who loved him, came 
knocking at my heart and got entrance there. Once 
more I deem it a pity that Protestantism should have 
entirely laid aside this mode of appealing to the re- 
ligious sentiment. 

I chiefly paid attention to the sculpture, and was 
interested in a long series of busts of the emperors 
and the members of their families, and some of the 
great men of Rome. There is a bust of Pompey the 
Great, bearing not the slightest resemblance to that 
vulgar and unintellectual one in the gallery of the 
Capitol, altogether a different cast of countenance. 
I could not judge whether it resembled the face of 
the statue, having seen the latter so imperfectly in 
the duskiness of the hall of the Spada Palace. These, 
I presume, are the busts which Mr. Powers con- 
demns, from internal evidence, as unreliable and 
conventional. He may be right, — and is far more 
likely, of course, to be right than I am, — yet there 
certainly seems to be character in these marble faces, 
and they differ as much among themselves as the 
same number of living faces might. The bust of 



1858.] ITALY. 3 

Caracalla, however, which Powers excepted from his 
censure, certainly does give stronger assurance of its 
being an individual and faithful portrait than any 
other in the series. All the busts of Caracalla — of 
which I have seen many — give the same evidence of 
their truth ; and I should like to know what it was 
in this abominable emperor that made him insist 
upon having his actual likeness perpetrated, with 
all the ugliness of its animal and moral character. I 
rather respect him for it, and still more the sculptor, 
whose hand, methinks, must have trembled as he 
wrought the bust. Generally these wicked old fel- 
lows, and their wicked wives and daughters, are not 
so hideous as we might expect. Messalina, for in- 
stance, has small and pretty features, though with 
rather a sensual development of the lower part of the 
face. The busts, it seemed to me, are usually superior 
as works of art to those in the Capitol, and either 
better preserved or more thoroughly restored. The 
bust of Nero might almost be called handsome here, 
though bearing his likeness unmistakably. 

I wish some competent person would undertake to 
analyze and develop his character, and how and by 
what necessity — with all his elegant tastes, his love 
of the beautiful, his artist nature — he grew to be such 
a monster. Nero has never yet had justice done him, 
nor have any of the wicked emperors ; not that I 
suppose them to have been any less monstrous than 
history represents them ; but there must surely have 
been something in their position and circumstances 
to render the terrible moral disease which seized upon 



4 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

them so generally almost inevitable. A wise and 
profound man, tender and reverent of the human 
soul, and capable of appreciating it in its height and 
depth, has a great field here for the exercise of his 
powers. It has struck me, in reading the history of 
the Itahan republics, that many of the tyrants, who 
sprung up after the destruction of their liberties, 
resembled the worst of the Roman emperors. The 
subject of Nero and his brethren has often perplexed 
me with vain desires to come at the truth. 

There were many beautiful specimens of antique, 
ideal sculpture all along the gallery, — ApoUos, Bac- 
chuses, Venuses, Mercurys, Fauns, — with the general 
character of all of which I was familiar enough to 
recognize them at a glance. The mystery and wonder 
of the gallery, however, the Venus di Medici, I 
could nowhere see, and indeed was almost afraid to 
see it ; for I somewhat apprehended the extinction of 
another of those hghts that shine along a man's 
pathway, and go out in a snuff the instant he comes 
within eyeshot of the fulfilment of his hopes. My 
European experience has extinguished many such. 
I was pretty well contented, therefore, not to find the 
famous statue in the whole of my long journey from 
end to end of the gallery, which terminates on the 
opposite side of the court from that where it com- 
mences. The ceiling, by the by, through the entire 
length, is covered with frescos, and the floor paved 
with a composition of stone smooth and polished hke 
marble. The final piece of sculpture, at the end of 
the gallery, is a copy of the Laocoon, considered very 



1858.] ITALY. 5 

fine. I know not why, but it did not impress me 
with the sense of mighty and terrible repose — a 
repose growing out of the infinitude of trouble — that 
I had felt in the original. 

Parallel with the gallery, on both sides of the 
palace-court, there runs a series of rooms devoted 
chiefly to pictures, although statues and bas-reliefs are 
likewise contained in some of them. I remember an 
unfinished bas-relief by Michael Angelo of a Holy Fam- 
ily, which I touched with my finger, because it seemed 
as if he might have been at work upon it only an hour 
ago. The pictures I did little more than glance at, 
till I had almost completed again the circuit of the 
gallery, through this series of parallel rooms, and then 
I came upon a collection of French and Dutch and 
Flemish masters, all of which interested me more than 
the Italian generally. There was a beautiful picture 
by Claude, almost as good as those in the British 
National Gallery, and very like in subject ; the sun 
near the horizon, of course, and throwing its line of 
light over the ripple of water, with ships at the strand, 
and one or two palaces of stately architecture on the 
shore. Landscapes by Rembrandt j fat Graces and 
other plump nudities by Rubens ; brass pans and 
earthen pots and herrings by Teniers and other 
Dutchmen ; none by Gerard Dow, I think, but several 
by Mieris ; all of which were like bread and beef and 
ale, after having been fed too long on made dishes. 
This is really a wonderful collection of pictures ; and 
from first to last — from Giotto to the men of yester- 
day — they are in admirable condition, and may be 



6 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [lS5&. 

appreciated for all the merit that they ever pos- 
sessed. 

I could not quite believe that I was not to find the 
Venus di Medici ; and still, as I passed from one room 
to another, my breath rose and fell a little, with the 
half-hope, half-fear, that she might stand before me. 
Really, I did not know that I cared so much about 
Venus, or any possible woman of marble. At last, 
when I had come from among the Dutchmen, I believe, 
and was looking at some works of Italian artists, chiefiy 
Florentines, I caught a glimpse of her through the 
door of the next room. It is the best room of the 
series, octagonal in shape, and hung with red damask, 
and the light comes down from a row of windows, 
passing quite round, beneath an octagonal dome. The 
Venus stands somewhat aside from the centre of the 
room, and is surrounded by an iron railing, a pace or 
two from her pedestal in front, and less behind. I 
think she might safely be left to the reverence her 
womanhood would win, without any other protection. 
She is very beautiful, very satisfactory ; and has a 
fresh and new charm about her unreached by any cast 
or copy. The hue of the marble is just so much 
mellowed by time, as to do for her all that Gibson 
tries, or ought to try to do for his statues by color, 
softening her, warming her almost imperceptibly, 
making her an inmate of the heart, as well as a 
spiritual existence. I felt a kind of tenderness for 
her ; an affection, not as if she were one woman, but 
all womanhood in one. Her modest attitude, which, 
before I saw her I had not liked, deeming that it 



1858.] ITALY. 7 

might be an artificial shame, is partly what unmakes 
her as the heathen goddess, and softens her into 
woman. There is a slight degree of alarm, too, in 
her face ; not that she really thinks anybody is look- 
ing at her, yet the idea has flitted through her mind, 
and startled her a little. Her face is so beautiful and 
intellectual, that it is not dazzled out of sight by her 
form. Methinks this w^as a triumph for the sculptor 
to achieve. I may as well stop here. It is of no use 
to throw heaps of words upon her j for they all fall 
away, and leave her standing in chaste and naked 
grace, as untouched as when I began. 

She has suffered terribly by the mishaps of her long 
existence in the marble. Each of her legs has been 
broken into two or three fragments, her arms have 
been severed, her body has been broken quite across 
at the waist, her head has been snapped off at the 
neck. Furthermore, there have been grievous wounds 
and losses of substance in various tender parts of her 
person. But on account of the skill with which the 
statue has been restored, and also because the idea is 
perfect and indestructible, all these injuries do not in 
the least impair the effect, even when you see where the 
dissevered fragments have been reunited. She is just 
as whole as when she left the hands of the sculptor. 
I am glad to have seen this Venus, and to have found 
her so tender and so chaste. On the wall of the room, 
and to be taken in at the same glance, is a painted Venus 
by Titian, reclining on a couch, naked and lustful. 

The room of the Venus seems to be the 'treasure- 
place of the whole Uffizzi Palace, containing more 



S FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l85a 

pictures by famous masters than are to be found in 
all the rest of the gallery. There were several by 
Raphael, and the room was crowded with the easels 
of artists. I did not look half enough at anything, 
but merely took a preliminary taste, as a prophecy of 
enjoyment to come. 

As we were at dinner to-day, at half past three, 
there was a ring at the door, and a minute after our 
servant brought a card. It was Mr. Robert Brown- 
ing'Sj and on it was written in pencil an invitation 
for us to go to see them this evening. He had left 
the card and gone away ; but very soon the bell 
rang again, and he had come back, having forgotten 
to give his address. This time he came in ; and he 
shook hands with all of us, children and grown 
people, and was very vivacious and agreeable. He 
looked younger and even handsomer than when I 
saw him in London, two years ago, and his gray 
hairs seemed fewer than those that had then strayed 
into his youthful head. He talked a wonderful 
quantity in a little time, and told us — among other 
things that we should never have dreamed of — that 
Italian people will not cheat you, if you construe 
them generously, and put them upon their honor. 

Mr. Browning was very kind and warm in his 
expressions of pleasure at seeing us ; and, on oui* 
part, we were all very glad to meet him. He must 

be an exceedingly likeable man They are to 

leave Florence very soon, and are going to Nor- 
mandy, I think he said, for the rest of the summer. 

The Venus di Medici has a dimple in her chin. 



1858.] ITALY. 9 

June 9th. — We went last evening, at eight o'clock, 
to see the Brownings ; and, after some search and 
inquiry, we found the Casa Guidi, which is a palace 
in a street not very far from our own. It being dusk, 
I could not see the exterior, which, if 1 remember, 
Browning has celebrated in song ; at all events, 
Mrs. Browning has called one of her poems " Casa 
Guidi Windows." 

The street is a narrow one ; but on entering the 
palace, we found a spacious staircase and ample 
accommodations of vestibule and hall, the latter 
opening on a balcony, where we could hear the 
chanting of priests in a church close by. Browning 
told us that this was the first church where an 
oratorio had ever been performed. He cam« into 
the anteroom to greet us, as did his little boy, 
Robert, whom they call Pennini for fondness. The 
latter cognomen is a diminutive of Apennino, which 
was bestowed upon him at his first advent into the 
world because he was so very small, there being 
a statue in Florence of colossal size called Apennino. 
I never saw such a boy as this before ; so slender, 
fragile, and spirit-like, — not as if he were actually in 
ill health, but as if be had little or nothing to do 
with human flesh and blood. His face is very pretty 
and most intelligent, and exceedingly like his 
mother's. He is nine years old, and seems at once 
less childlike and less manly than would befit that 
age. I should not quite like to be the father of such 
a boy, and should fear to stake so much interest and 
affection on him as he cannot iiail to inspire. I wonder 



10 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

what is to become of him, — whether he will ever grow 
to be a man, — whether it is desirable that he should. 
His parents ought to turn their whole attention to 
making him robust and earthly, and to giving him a 
thicker scabbard to sheathe his spirit in. He was 
born in Florence, and prides himself on being a 
Florentine, and is indeed as un-English a produc- 
tion as if he were native of another planet. 

Lirs. Browning met us at the door of the drawing- 
room, and greeted us most kindly, — a pale, small 
person, scarcely embodied at all; at any rate, only 
substantial enough to put forth her slender fingers 
to be grasped, and to speak with a shrill, yet sweet, 
tenuity of voice. Really, I do not see how Mr. 
Browning can suppose that he has an earthly wife 
any more than an earthly child ; both are of the 
elfin race, and will flit away from him some day 
when he least thinks of it. She is a good and kind 
fairy, however, and sweetly disposed towards the 
human race, although only remotely akin to it. It 
is wonderful to see how small she is, how pale her 
cheek, how bright and dark her eyes. There is 
not such another figure in the world ; and her black 
ringlets cluster down into her neck, and make her 
face look the whiter by their sable profusion. I 
could not form any judgment about her age; it 
may range anywhere within the limits of human 
life or elfin life. When I met her in London at 
Lord Houghton's breakfast-table, she did not impress 
me so singularly ; for the morning light is more prosaic 
than the dim illumination of their great tapestried 



1858.] ITALY. 11 

drawing-room; and besides, sitting next to her, she 
did not have occasion to raise her voice in speaking, 
and I was not sensible what a slender voice she has. 
It is marvellous to me how so extraordinary, so acute, 
so sensitive a creature can impress us, as she does, 
with the certainty of her benevolence. It seems to 
me there were a million chances to one that she 
would have been a miracle of acidity and bitterness. 

We were not the only guests. Mr. and [Mrs. 

E , Americans, recently from the East, and on 

intimate terms with the Brownings, arrived after 

us; also Miss F. H , an English literary lady, 

whom I have met several times in Liverpool; and 
lastly came the white head and palmer-like beard of 

Mr. with his daughter. Mr. Browning was 

very efficient in keeping up conversation with every- 
body, and seemed to be in all parts of the room and 
in every group at the same moment; a most vivid 
and quick-thoughted person, logical and common- 
sensible, as, I presume, poets generally are in their 

daily talk. Mr. , as usual, was homely and 

plain of manner, with an old-fashioned dignity, 
nevertheless, and a remarkable deference and gentle- 
ness of tone in addressing Mrs. Browning. I doubt, 
however, whether he has any high appreciation 
either of her poetry or her husband's, and it is my 
impression that they care as little about his. 

We had some tea and some strawberries, and 
passed a pleasant evening. There was no very note- 
worthy conversation ; the most interesting topic 
being that disagreeable and now wearisome one of 



1^ FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l€58. 

spiritual communications, as fegards which Mrs. 
Browning is a believer, and her husband ati infidel. 
Mr. — — appeared not to have made up his mind on 
the matter, but told a story of a successful communi- 
cation between Cooper the novelist and his sister, 
who had been dead fifty years. Browning and his 
wife had both been present at a spiritual session held 
by Mr. Hume, and had seen and felt the unearthly 
hands, one of which had placed a laurel wreath on 
Mrs. Browning's head. Browning, however, avowed 
his belief that these hands were afiixed to the feet of 
Mr. Hume, who lay extended in his chair, with his legs 
stretched far under the table. The marvellousness of 
the fact, as I have read of it, and heard it fi:'om other 
eye-witnesses, melted strangely away in his hearty 
gripe, and at the sharf) tduch of his logic ; while his 
wife, ever and anon, put in a little gentle w<Drd of 
expostulation; 

I am rather surprised that Browning's conversation 
should be so clear, and so much to the purpose at the 
moment, since his poetry can seldom proceed far 
without running into the high grass of lateM mean- 
ings and obscure allusions. 

Mrs. Browning's health does not permit lalje hours, 
^o we began to take leave at about ten o'clock. I 
heard her ask Mr. — — if he did iiot mean to revisit 
Europe, aiid heard him answer, not uncheerfull'y, taking 
hold of his white hair, " It is getting rather too late in 
the evening now." If any old age can be cheerful, I 
should think his might be; so good a man, so oool^ 
so calm, so bright, too, we may say. His life hsis 



1858] itALY. 13 

been lik^ the days that end in plea;sant sunsets. He 
has a great loss, however, or what ought to be a 
great loss, — soon to be encountered in the death of 
his wife, who, I think, can hardly live to reach 
America. He is not eminently an affectiotiate man. 
I take him to be one who cannot get closely home to 
his sorrow, nor feel it so sensibly as he gladly would ; 
and, in consequence of that deficiency, the world 
lacks substance to hilm. I^ is partly the result, per- 
haps, of his not having sufficiently cultivated his 
emotional nature. His poetfy shows it, and his per- 
sonal intercourse, though kindly, does not stir one's 
blood in the least. 

Little Pennini, during the evening, sometimes 
helped the guests to cake and strawberries; joined 
in the conversation, when he had anything to say, or 
sat down upon a couch to enjoy his own meditations. 
H-e has long curling hair, and has not yet emerged 
from his frock and short hose. It is funny to think 
of putting him into trousers. His likeness to his 
mother is strange to behold. 

Jime \^th. — My wife and I went to the Pitti Palace 
to-day ; and first entered a court where, yesterday, 
sh6 had Seem ^ cai^pet of flowers, arranged for some 
great ceremony. It must have been a most beautiful^ 
sight, the pavement of the court being entirely covered? 
by them, in a regular pattern of brilliant hueis, so as 
really to be a living mosaic. This morning, howevei', 
the court had nothing but its usual stones, and the 
show of yesterday seemed so much the more ines- 
timable as having been so evanescent. Aro'und \\\q 



/X/.- 



14 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

walls of the court there were still some pieces of 
splendid tapestry which had made part of yesterday's 
magnificence. We went up the staircase, of regally 
broad and easy ascent, and made application to be 
admitted to see the grand ducal apartments. An 
attendant accordingly took the keys, and ushered us 
first into a great hall with a vaulted ceiling, and then 
through a series rooms, with rich frescos 

above and mosaic floors, hung with damask, adorned 
with gilded chandeliers, and glowing, in short, with 
more gorgeousness than I could have imagined 
beforehand, or can now remember. In many of the 
rooms were those superb antique cabinets which I 
admire more than any other furniture ever invented ; 
only these were of unexampled art and glory, inlaid 
with precious stones, and with beautiful Florentine 
mosaics, both of flowers and landscapes, — each cabinet 
worth a lifetime's toil to make it, and the cost a whole 
palace to pay for it. Many of the rooms were covered 
with arras, of landscapes, hunting-scenes, mytho- 
logical subjects, or historical scenes, equal to pictures 
in truth of representation, and possessing an in- 
describable richness that makes them preferable as 
a mere adornment of princely halls and chambers. 
Some of the rooms, as I have said, were laid in 
mosaic of stone and marble, otherwise in lovely 
patterns of various woods ; others were covered with 
carpets, delightful to tread upon, and glowing like 
the living floor of flowers which my wife saw yester- 
day. There were tables, too, of Florentine mosaic, 
the mere materials of which — lapis lazuli, malachite, 



1858.] ITALY. 15 

pearl, and a hundred other precious things — were 
worth a fortune, and made a thousand times more 
valuable by the artistic skill of the" manufacturer. I 
toss together brilliant words by the handful, and 
make a rude sort of patchwork, but can record no 
adequate idea of what I saw in this suite of rooms; 
and the taste, the subdued splendor, so that it did 
not shine too high, but was all tempered into an 
effect at once grand and soft, — this was quite as re- 
markable as the gorgeous material. I have seen a 
very dazzling effect produced in the principal cabin 
of an American clipper-ship quite opposed to this in 
taste. 

After making the circuit of the grand ducal apart- 
ments, we went into a door in the left wing of the 
palace, and ascended a narrow flight of stairs, — 
several tortuous flights indeed, — to the picture-gal- 
lery. It fills a great many stately halls, which them- 
selves are well worth a visit for the architecture and 
frescos ; only these matters become commonplace 
after travelling through a mile or two of them. The 
collection of pictures — as well for their number as 
for the celebrity and excellence of many of them — 
is the most interesting that I have seen, and I do not 
yet feel in a condition, nor perhaps ever shall, to 
speak of a single one. It gladdened my very heart 
to find that they were not darkened out of sight, nor 
apparently at all injured by time, but were well 
kept and varnished, brilliantly framed, and, no doubt, 
restored by skilful touches if any of them needed it. 
The artists and amateurs may say what they like; 



16 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

for my part, I know no drearier feeling than that 
inspired by a ruined picture, — ruined, that is, by time, 
damp, or rough treatment, — and I would a thousand 
times rather an artist should do his best towards 
reviving it, than have it left in such a condition. I 
do not believe, however, that these pictures have 
been sacrilegiously interfered with; at ail events, I 
saw in the masterpieces no touch but what seemed 
worthy of the master-hand. 

The most beautiful picture in the world, I am con- 
vinced, is Raphael's " Madonna della Seggiola." I was 
familiar with it in a hundred engravings and copies, 
and therefore it shone upon me as with a familiar 
beauty, though infinitely more divine than I had ever 
seen it before. An artist was copying it, and pro- 
ducing certainly something very like a fac-simile, yet 
leaving out, as a matter of course, that mysterious 
something that renders the picture a miracle. It is 
my present opinion that the pictorial art is capable 
of something more like magic, more wonderful and 
inscrutable in its methods, than poetry or any other 
mode of developing the beautiful. But how does 
this accord with what I have been saying only a 
minute ago 1 How then can the decayed picture of a 
great master ever be restored by the touches of an 
inferior hand ? Doubtless it never can be restored ; 
but let some devoted worshipper do his utmost, and 
the whole inherent spirit of the divine piottiire may 
pervade his restorations likewise. 

I saw the " Three Fates " of Michael Angelo, which 
were also being copied, as were many other of the 



1858.] ITALY. 17 

best pictui*es. Miss Fanny Howorth, whom I met 
in the gallery, told me that to copy the "Madonna 
della Seggiola," application must be made five years 
beforehand, so many are the artists who aspire to copy 
it. Michael Angelo's Fates are three very grim 
and pitiless old women, who i*espectively spin, hold, 
and cut the thread of human destiny, all in a mood 
of sombre gloom, but with no more sympathy than 
if they had nothing to do with us; I remember seeing 
an etching of this when I was a child, and being 
struck, even then, with the terrible, stem, passionless 
severity, neither loving us nor hating us, that charac- 
terizes these ugly old women. If they were angry, 
or had the least spite against human kind, it would 
render them the more tolerable. They are a g-reat 
work, containing and representing the very idea that 
makes a belief in fate such a cold torture to the 
human soul. God give me the sure belief in his 
Providence ! 

In a year's time, with the advantage of access to 
this magnificent gallei'y, I think I might come to 
have some little knowledge of pictures. At present 
I still know nothing ; but am glad to find myself 
capable, at least, of loving one picture better than 
another. I cannot always " keep the heights I gain,'* 
however, and after admiring and being moved by a 
picture oiie day, it is within my experience to look 
at it the next as little moved as if it were a tavern- 
sign. It is pretty much the same with statuary ; the 
same, too, with those pictured windov^s of the DuomO; 
which I described so rapturously a few days ago. I 



18 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

looked at them again the next morning, and thought 
they would have been hardly worthy of my eulogium, 
even had all the separate windows of the Cathedral 
combined their narrow lights into one grand, re- 
splendent, many-colored arch at the eastern end. 
It is a pity they are so narrow. England has many 
a great chancel-window that, though dimmer in its 
hues, dasty, and perhaps made up of heterogeneous 
fragments, eclipses these by its spacious breadth. 

From the gallery, I went into the Bololi Gardens, 
which are contiguous to the palace j but found them 
too sunny for enjoyment. They seem to consist partly 
of a wilderness ; but the portion into which I strayed 
was laid out with straight walks, lined with high box- 
hedges, along which there was only a narrow margin 
of shade. I saw an amphitheatre, with a wide sweep 
of marble seat around it, enclosing a grassy space, 
where, doubtless, the Medici may have witnessed 
splendid spectacles. 

June Wih. — I paid another visit to the Ufl&zzi 
gallery this morning, and found that the Venus is one 
of the things the charm of which does not diminish on 
better acquaintance. The world has not grown weary 
of her in all these ages ; and mortal man may look on 
her with new delight from infancy to old age, and 
keep the memory of her, I should imagine, as one of 
the treasures of spiritual existence hereafter. Surely, 
it makes me more ready to believe in the high des- 
tinies of the human race, to think that this beautiful 
form is but nature's plan for all womankind, and that 
the nearer the actual woman approaches it, the more 



1858.] ITALY. 19 

natural she is. I do not, and cannot think of her as a 
senseless image, but as a being that lives to gladden 
the world, incapable of decay and death ; as young 
and fair to-day as she was three thousand years ago, 
and still to be young and fair as long as a beautiful 
thought shall require physical embodiment. I wonder 
how any sculptor has had the impertinence to aim at 
any other presentation of female beauty. I mean no 
disrespect to Gibson or Powers, or a hundred other 
men who people the world with nudities, all of which 
are abortions as compared with her ; but I think the 
world would be all the richer if their Venuses, their 
Greek Slaves, their Eves, were burnt into quicklime, 
leaving us only this statue as our image of the beauti- 
ful. I observed to-day that the eyes of the statue are 
slightly hollowed out, in a peculiar way, so as to give 
them a look of depth and intelligence. She is a 
miracle. The sculptor must have wrought religiously, 
and have felt that something far beyond his own skill 
was working through his hands. I mean to leave off 
speaking of the Venus hereafter, in utter despair of 
saying what I wish ; especially as the contemplation 
of the statue will refine and elevate my taste, and 
make it continually more difi&cult to express my sense 
of its excellence, as the perception of it grows upon 
me. If at any time I become less sensible of it, it 
will be my deterioration, not any defect in the statue. 
I looked at many of the pictures, and found myself 
in a favorable mood for enjoying them. It seems to 
me that a work of art is entitled to credit for all that 
it makes us feel in our best moments : and we must 



20 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

judge of its merits by the impression it then makes, 
and not by the coldness and insensibility of our less 
genial moods. 

After leaving the Uffizzi Palace, .... I went into 
the Museum of Natural History, near the Pitti Palace. 
It is a very good collection of almost everything that 
Nature has made, — or exquisite copies of what she has 
made, — stones, shells, vegetables, insects, fishes, ani- 
mals, man ; the greatest wonders of the museum being 
some models in wax of all parts of the human frame. 
It is good to have the wholeness and summed-up 
beauty of woman in the memory, when looking at the 
details of her system as here displayed ; for these last, 
to the natural eye, are by no means beautiful. But 
they are what belong only to our mortality. The 
beauty that makes them invisible is our immortal 
type, which we shall take away with us. Under glass 
cases, there were some singular and horribly truthful 
representations, in small wax figures, of a time of 
pestilence ; the hasty burial, or tossing into one 
common sepulchre, of discolored corpses, — a very ug- 
ly piece of work, indeed. I think Murray says that 
these things were made for the Grand Duke Cosmo ; 
and if so, they do him no credit, indicating something 
dark and morbid in his character. 

June \2tth. — We called at the Powers's yesterday 

morning to leave R there for an hour or two to play 

with the children ; and it being not yet quite time for 
the Pitti Palace, we stepped into the studio. Soon 
Mr. Powers made his appearance, in his dressing-gown 
and slippers and sculptor's cap, smoking a cigar 



1858..] ITALY. 21 

He was very cordial and pleasant, as I have always 
found him, and began immediately to be communica- 
tive about his own works, or any other subject that 
came up. There were two casts of the Venus di 
Medici in the rooms, which he said were vahiable in a 
commercial point of view, being genuine casts from 
the mould taken from the statue. He then gave us a 
quite unexpected but most interesting lecture on the 
Venus, demonstrating it, as he proceeded, by reference 
to the points which he criticised. The figure, he 
seemed to allow, was admirable, though I think he 
hardly classes it so high as his own Greek Slave or 
Eva ; but the face, he began with saying^ was that of 
an idiot. Then, leaning on the pedestal of the cast, 
he continued, " It is rather a bold thing to say^ is n't 
it, that the sculptor of the Venus di Medici did not 
know what he was about ? " 

Truly, it appeared to me so ; but Powers went on 
remorselessly, and showed, in the first place, that the 
eye was not like any eye that JN"ature ever made ; 
^nd, indeed, being examined closely, and abstracted 
from the rest of the face, it has a very queer look, — 
less like a human eye than a half- worn buttonhole ! 
Then he attacked the ear, which, he affirmed and 
demonstrated, was placed a good deal too low on the 
head, thereby giving an artificial and monstrous 
height to the portion of the head above it. The fore- 
head met with no better treatment in his hands, and 
as to the mouth, it was altogether wrong, as well in 
its general make as in such niceties as the junction of 
the skin of the lips to th-e cc»nmon skin around them. 



22 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

In a word, the poor face was battered all to pieces and 
utterly demolished ; nor was it possible to doubt or 
question that it fell by its own demerits. All that 
could be urged in its defence — and even that I did 
not urge — being that this very face had affected me, 
only the day before, with a sense of higher beauty 
and intelligence than I had ever then received from 
sculpture, and that its expression seemed to accord 
with that of the whole figure, as if it were the sweetest 
note of the same music. There must be something 
in this ; the sculptor disregarded technicalities, and 
the imitation of actual nature, the better to produce 
the effect which he really does produce, in somewhat 
the same way as a painter works his magical illusions 
by touches that have no relation to the truth if looked 
at from the wrong point of view. But Powers con- 
siders it certain that the antique sculptor had be- 
stowed all his care on the study of the human figure, 
and really did not know how to make a face. I 
myself used to think that the face was a much less 
important thing with the Greeks, among whom the 
entire beauty of the form was familiarly seen, than 
with ourselves, who allow no other nudity. 

After annihilating the poor visage. Powers showed 
us his two busts of Proserpine and Psyche, and con- 
tinued his lecture by showing the truth to nature 
with which these are modelled. I freely acknowledge 
the fact ; there is no sort of comparison to be made 
between the beauty, intelligence, feeling, and ac- 
curacy of representation in these two faces and in 
that of the Venus di Medici. A light — the light 



1858.] ITALY. 23 

of a soul proper to each individual character — seems 
to shine from the interior of the marble, and beam 
forth from the features, chiefly from the eyes. StiU 
insisting upon the eye, and hitting the poor Venus 
another and another and still another blow on that 
unhappy feature, Mr. Powers turned up and turned 
inward and turned outward his own Titanic orb, — 
the biggest, by far, that ever I saw in mortal head, — 
and made us see and confess that there was nothing 
right in the Venus and everything right in Psyche 
and Proserpine. To say the truth, their marble eyes 
have life, and, placing yourself in the proper position 
towards them, you can meet their glances, and feel 
them mingle with your own. Powers is a great man, 
and also a tender and delicate one, massive and rude 
of surface as he looks ; and it is rather absurd to feel 
how he impressed his auditor, for the time being, 
with his own evident idea that nobody else is worthy 

to touch marble. Mr. B told me that Powers 

has had many difficulties on professional grounds, as 
I understood him, and with his brother artists. No 
wonder ! He has said enough in my hearing to put 
him at swords' points with sculptors of every epoch 
and every degree between the two inclusive extremes 
of Phidias and Clarke Mills. 

He has a bust of the reigning Grand Duchess of 
Tuscany, who sat to him for it. The bust is that of 
a noble-looking lady ; and Powers remarked that 
royal personages have a certain look that distin- 
guishes them from other people, and is seen in 
individuals of no lower rank. They all have it ; the 



24 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

Queen of England and Prinee Albert have it ; and 
.so likewise has every other Royalty, although the 
possession of this kingly look implies nothing what- 
ever as respects kingly and commanding qualities. 
He said that none of our public men, whatever 
authority they may have held, or for whatever length 
of time, possess this look, but he added afterwards 
that Washington had it. Commanders of armies 
sometimes have it, but not in the degree that royal 
personages do. It is, as well as I could make out 
Powers's idea, a certain coldness of demeanca*, and 
€^ecially of eye, that surrounds them with an at- 
mosphere through which the electricity of human 
brotherhood cannot pass. From their youth upward 
they are taught to feel themselves apart from the 
rest of mankind, and this manner becomes a second 
nature to them in consequence, and as a safeguard 
to their conventional dignity. Thej put themselves 
under glass, as it were (the illustration is my own), 
so that, though you see them, and see them looking 
po mprp noble and dignified than other mortals, nor 
so much so as many, still they keep themselves within 
a sort of sanctity, and repel you by an invisible bar- 
rier. Even if they invite you with a show of warmth 
and hospitality, you cannot get through. I, too, 
recognize this look in the portraits of Washington ; 
in him, a mild, benevolent coldness and apartness, but 
indicating that formality which seems to have been 
deeper in him than in any other mortal, and which 
built up an actual fortification between himself and 
human sympathy. I wish, for once, Washington could 



1858.] ITALY. 25 

come out of his envelopment and show us what his 
real dimensions were. 

Among other models of statues heretofore made, 
Powers showed us one of Melancholy, or rather of 
Contemplation, from Milton's " Penseroso " ; a female 
figure with uplifted face and rapt look, " communing 
with the skies." It is very fine, and goes deeply into 
Milton's thought j but, as far as the outward form 
and action are concerned, I remember seeing a rude 
engraving in my childhood that probably suggested 
the idea. It was prefixed to a cheap American edi- 
tion of Milton's poems, and was probably as familiar 
to Powers as to myself It is very remarkable how 
difficult it seems to be to strike out a new attitude in 
sculpture ; a new group, or a new single figure. 

One piece of sculptiu-e Powers exhibited, however, 
which was very exquisite, and such as I never saw 
before. Opening a desk, he took out something care- 
fully enclosed between two layers of cotton wool, on 
removing which there appeared a little baby's hand 
most deUcately represented in the whitest marble ; 
all the dimples where the knuckles were to be, all 
the creases in the plump flesh, every infantine wrinkle 
of the soft skin being lovingly recorded. " The critics 
condemn minute representation," said Powers ; " but 
you may look at this through a microscope and see 
if it injures the general effect." Nature herself never 
made a prettier or truer little hand. It was the hand 
of his daughter, — " Luly's hand," Powers called it, — 
the same that gave my own such a frank and friendlv 
grasp when I first met '' Luly." The sculptor made 

VOL. II. 2 



26 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [I858. 

it only for himself and his wife, but so many people, 
he said, had insisted on having a copy, that there are 
now forty scattered about the world. At sixty years, 
Luly ought to have her hand sculptured again, and 
give it to her grandchildren with the baby's hand of 
five months old. The baby-hand that had done noth- 
ing, and felt only its mother's kiss; the old lady's 
hand that had exchanged the love-pressure, worn the 
marriage-ring, closed dead eyes, — done a lifetime's 
work, in short. The sentiment is rather obvious, but 
true nevertheless. 

Before we went away. Powers took us into a room 
apart — apparently the secretest room he had — and 
showed us some tools and machinery, all of his own 
contrivance and invention. " You see I am a bit of a 
Yankee," he observed. 

This machinery is chiefly to facilitate the process of 
modelling his works, for — except in portrait-busts — 
he makes no clay model as other sculptors do, but 
models directly in the plaster ; so that instead of be- 
in p- crumbled, like clay, the original model remains a 
J. -. ^anent possession. He has also invented a certain 
open file, which is of great use in finishing the surface 
of the marble ; and likewise a machine for making 
these files and for punching holes through iron, and 
he demonstrated its efficiency by punching a hole 
through an iron bar, with a force equivalent to ten 
thousand pounds, by the mere application of a part of 
his own weight. These inventions, he says, are his 
amusement, and the bent of his nature towards sculp- 
ture must indeed have been strong, to counteract, in 



1858.] ITALY. 27 

an American, such a capacity for the contrivance of 



I had no idea of fiUing so many pages of this jour- 
nal with the saying's and characteristics of Mr. Powers, 
but the man and his talk are fresh, original, and full 
of bone and muscle, and I enjoy him much. 

We now proceeded to the Pitti Palace, and spent 
several hours pleasantly in its saloons of pictures. I 
never enjoyed pictures anywhere else as I do in Flor- 
ence. There is an admirable Judith in this gallery 
by Allori ; a face of great beauty and depth, and her 
hand clutches the head of Holofemes by the hair in a 
way that startles the spectator. There are two peas- 
ant Madonnas by Murillo ; simple women, yet with a 
thoughtful sense of some high mystery connected with 
the baby in their arms. 

Raphael grows upon me; several other famous 
painters — Guide, for instance — are fading out of my 
mind. Salvator Rosa has two really wonderful land- 
scapes, looking from the shore seaward ; and Rubens 
too, likewise on a large scale, of mountain and plain. 
It is very idle and foolish to talk of pictures t, 
after poring over them and into them, it seems a pity 
to let all the thought excited by them pass into noth- 
ingness. 

The copyists of pictures are very numerous, both in 
the Pitti and Uffizzi galleries ; and, unlike sculptors, 
they appear to be on the best of terms with one an- 
other, chatting sociably, exchanging friendly criticism, 
and giving their opinions as to the best mode of at- 
taining the desired effects. Perhaps, as mere copy- 



28 FUENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

ists, they escape the jealousy that might spring up 
between rival painters attempting to develop original 
ideas. Miss Howorth says that the business of copy- 
ing pictures, especially those of Raphael, is a regular 
profession, and she thinks it exceedingly obstructive 
to the progress or existence of a modern school of 
painting, there being a regular demand and sure sale 
for all copies of the old masters, at prices proportioned 
to their merit ; whereas the effort to be original in- 
sures nothing, except long neglect, at the beginning of 
a career, and probably ultimate failure, and the neces- 
sity of becoming a copyist at last. Some artists em- 
ploy themselves from'youth to age in nothing else but 
the copying of one single and self-same picture by 
Raphael, and grow at last to be perfectly mechanical, 
making, I suppose, the same identical stroke of the 
brush in fifty successive pictures. 

The weather is very hot now, — hotter in the sun- 
shine, I think, than a midsummer day usually is in 
America, but with rather a greater possibility of 
being comfortable in the shade. The nights, too, 
n,re warm, and the bats fly forth at dusk, and the 
fireflies quite light up the green depths of our little 
garden. The atmosphere, or something else, causes 
a sort of alacrity in my mind and an affluence of 
ideas, such as they are; but it does not thereby 
make me the happier. I feel an impulse to be at 
w^ork, but am kept idle by the sense of being un- 
settled wdth removals to be gone through, over and 
over again, before I can shut myself into a quiet 
room of my own, and turn the key. I need monotony 



185S.] ITALY. 29 

too, an eventless exterior life, before I can live in 
the world within. 

June 15th. — Yesterday we went to the Uffizzi gal- 
lery, and, of course, I took the opportunity to look 
again at the Venus di Medici after Powers's attack 
upon her face. Some of the defects he attributed to 
her I could not see in the statue ; for instance, the 
ear appeared to be in accordance with his own rule, 
the lowest part of it being about in a straight line 
with the upper lip. The eyes must be given up, as 
not, when closely viewed, having the shape, the 
curve outwards, the formation of the lids, that eyes 
ought to have ; but still, at a proper distance, they 
seemed to have inteUigence in them beneath the 
shadow cast by the brow. I cannot help thinking 
that the sculptor intentionally made every feature 
what it is, and calculated them all with a view to 
the desired effect. Whatever rules may be trans- 
gressed, it is a noble and beautiful face, — more so, 
perhaps, than if all rules had been obeyed. I wish 
Powers would do his best to fit the Venus's figure 
(which he does not deny to be admirable) with a 
face which he would deem equally admirable and in 
accordance with the sentiment of the form. 

We looked pretty thoroughly through the gallery, 
and I saw many pictures that impressed me ; but 
among such a multitude, with only one poor mind to 
take note of them, the stamp of each new impression 
helps to obliterate a former one. I am sensible, 
however, that a process is going on, and has been 
ever since I came to Italy, that puts me in a state to 



30 FKENCH A^^D ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

see pictures with less toil, and more pleasure, aud 
makes me more fastidious, yet more sensible of 
beauty where I saw none before. It is the sign, I 
presume, of a taste still very defective, that I take sin- 
gular pleasure in the elaborate imitations of Van 
Mieris, Gerard Dow, and other old Dutch wizards, who 
painted such brass pots that you can see your face 
in them, and such earthen pots that they will surely 
hold water; and who spent weeks and months in 
turning a foot or two of canvas into a perfect micro- 
scopic illusion of some homely scene. For my part, 
I wish Raphael had painted the " Transfiguration " in 
this style, at the same time preserving his breadth 
and grandeur of design ; nor do I believe that there 
is any real impediment to the combination of the two 
styles, except that no possible space of human life 
could suffice to cover a quarter part of the canvas of 
the " Transfiguration " with such touches as Gerard 
Dow's. But one feels the vast scope of this wonderful 
art, when we think of two excellences so far apart as 
that of this last painter and Raphael. I pause a good 
while, too, before the Dutch paintings of fruit and 
flowers, where tulips and roses acquire an immortal 
bloom, and grapes have kept the freshest juice in 
them for two or three hundred years. Often, in these 
pictures, there is a bird's-nest, every straw perfectly 
represented, and the stray feather, or the down that 
the mother-bird plucked from her bosom, with the 
three or four small speckled eggs, that seem as if 
they might be yet warm. These pretty miracles have 
their use in assuring us that painters really can do 



1858.] ITALY. 31 

something that takes hold of us in our most matter- 
of-fact moods ; whereas, the merits of the grander 
style of art may be beyond our ordinary appreciation, 
and leave us in doubt whether we have not befooled 
ourselves with a false admiration. 

Until we learn to appreciate the cherubs and angels 
that Raphael scatters through the blessed air, in a 
picture of the *' Nativity," it is not amiss to look at a 
Dutch fly settling on a peach, or a bumblebee burying 
himself in a flower. 

It is another token of imperfect taste, no doubt, 
that queer pictures and absurd pictures remain 
in my memory, when better ones pass away by 
the score. There is a picture of Venus, combing 
her son Cupid's head with a small-tooth comb, and 
looking with maternal care among his curls; this I 
shall not forget. Likewise, a picture of a broad, 
rubicund Judith by Bardone, — a widow of fifty, of an 
easy, lymphatic, cheerful temperament, who has just 
killed Holofernes, and is as self-complaisant as if she 
had been carving a goose. What could possibly have 
stirred up this pudding of a woman (unless it were a 
pudding-stick) to do such a deed ! I looked with much 
pleasure at an ugly, old, fat, jolly Bacchus, astride 
on a barrel, by Rubens ; the most natural and life-like 
representation of a tipsy rotundity of flesh that it is 
possible to imagine. And sometimes, amid these sensual 
images, I caught the divine pensiveness of a Madon- 
na's face, by Raphael, or the glory and majesty of the 
babe Jesus in her arm, with his Father shining through 
him. This is a sort of revelation, whenever it comes. 



32 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

This morning, immediately after breakfast, I 
walked into the city, meaning to make myself better 
acquainted with its appearance, and to go into its 
various churches; but it soon grew so hot, that I 
turned homeward again. The interior of the Duomo 
was deliciously cool, to be sure, — cool and dim, after 
the white-hot sunshine ', but an old woman began to 
persecute me, so that I came away. A male beggar 
drove me out of another church ; and I took refuge in 
the street, where the beggar and 1 would have been 
two cinders together, if we had stood long enough on 
the sunny sidewalk. After my five summers' ex- 
perience of England, I may have forgotten what hot 
weather is ; but it docs appear to me that an Ameri- 
can summer is not so fervent as this. Besides the 
direct rays, the white pavement throws a furnace- 
heat up into one's face ; the shady margin of the 
street is barely tolerable ; but it is like going through 
the ordeal of fire to cross the broad bright glare of an 
open piazza. The narrow streets prove themselves a 
blessing at this season, except when the sun looks 
directly into them; the broad eaves of the houses, 
too, make a salvage of shade, almost always. I do 
not know what becomes of the street-merchants at 
the noontide of these hot days. They form a 
numerous class in Florence, displaying their wares — 
linen or cotton cloth, threads, combs, and all manner 
of haberdashery — on movable counters that are 
borne about on wheels. In the shady morning, you 
see a whole side of a street in a piazza occupied by 
them, all ofi'ering their merchandise at full cry. They 



1858.] ITALY. 33^ 

dodge as they can from shade to shade ; but at last 
the sunshine floods the whole space, and they seem 
to have melted away, leaving not a rag of themselves 
or what they dealt in. 

Cherries are very abundant now, and have been so 
ever since we came here, in the markets and all 
about the streets. They are of various kinds, some 
exceedingly large, insomuch that it is almost neces- 
sary to disregard the old proverb about making two 
bites of a cherry. Fresh figs are already spoken of, 
though I have seen none ; but I saw some peaches 
this morning, looking as if they might be ripe. 

June Kdtli. — Mr. and Mrs. Powers called to see us 
last evening. Mr, Powers, as usual, was full of talk, 
and gave utterance to a good many instructive and 
entertaining ideas. 

As one instance of the little influence the religion 
of the Italians has upon their morals, he told a story 
of one of his servants, w^ho desired leave to set up a 
small shrine of the Virgin in their room — a cheap 
print, or bas-relief, or image, such as are sold every- 
where at the shops — and to burn a lamp before it ; 
she engaging, of course, to supply the oil at her own 
expense. By and by, her oil-flask appeared to possess 
a miraculous property of replenishing itself, and Mr. 
Powers took measures to ascertain where the oil 
came from. It turned out that the servant had all 
the time been stealing the oil from them, and keeping 
up her daily sacrifice and w^orship to the Virgin by 
this constant theft. 

His talk soon turned upon sculpture, and he spoko 
2* c 



34 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

once more of the difficulty imposed upon an artist 
by the necessity of clothing portrait statues in the 
modern costume. I find that he does not approve 
either of nudity or of the Roman toga for a modern 
statue ; neither does he think it right to shirk the 
difficulty — as Chantrey did in the case of Washington 
— by enveloping him in a cloak ; but acknowledges 
the propriety of taking the actual costume of the age 
and doing his best with it. He himself did so with his 
own Washington, and also with a statue that he made 
of Daniel Webster. I suggested that though this 
costume might not appear ridiculous to us now, yet, 
two or three centuries hence, it would create, to the 
people of that day, an impossibility of seeing the real 
man through the absurdity of his envelopment^ after 
it shall have entirely grown out of fashion and 
remembrance; and Webster would seem as absurd 
to them then as he would to us now in the masquerade 
of some bygone day. It might be well, therefore, 
to adopt some conventional costume, never actual, 
but always graceful and noble. Besides, Webster, 
for example, had other costumes than that which he 
wore in public, and perhaps it was in those that he 
lived his most real life ; his dressing-gown, his drapery 
of the night, the dress that he wore on his fishing 
excursions; in these other costumes he spent three 
fourths of his time, and most probably was thus ar- 
rayed when he conceived the great thoughts that af- 
terwards, in some formal and outside mood, he gave 
forth to the public. I scarcely think I was right, but 
am not sure of the contrary. At any rate, I know 



1858.] ITALY. 35 

that I should have felt much more sure that I knew 
the real Webster, if I had seen him in any of the 
above-mentioned dresses, than either in his swallow- 
tailed coat or frock. 

Talking of a taste for painting and sculpture, Powers 
observed that it was something very different and 
quite apart from the moral sense, and that it was 
often, perhaps generally possessed by unprincipled 
men of ability and cultivation. I have had this per- 
ception myself A genuine love of painting and sculp- 
ture, and perhaps of music, seems often to have dis- 
tinguished men capable of every social crime, and to 
have formed a fine and hard enamel over their charac- 
ters. Perhaps it is because such tastes are artificial, 
the product of cultivation, and, when highly developed, 
imply a great remove from natural simplicity. 

This morning I went with U to the Uffizzi gal- 
lery, and again looked with more or less attention at 
almost every picture and statue. I saw a little pic- 
ture of the golden age, by Zucchero, in which the 
charms of youths and virgins are depicted with a free- 
dom that this iron age can hardly bear to look at. 
The cabinet of gems happened to be open for the ad- 
mission of a privileged party, and we likewise went in 
and saw a brilliant collection of goldsmiths' work, 
among which, no doubt, were specimens from such 
hands as Benvenuto Cellini. Little busts with dia- 
mond eyes ; boxes of gems ; cups carved out of pre- 
cious material ; crystal vases, beautifully chased and 
engraved, and sparkling with jewels ; great pearls, in 
the midst of rubies ; opals, rich with all manner of 



36 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

lovely lights. I remember Benvenuto Cellini, in his 
memoirs, speaks of manufacturing such playthings as 
these. 

I observed another characteristic of the summer 
streets of Florence to-day ; tables, movable to and 
fro, on wheels, and set out with cool iced drinks and 
cordials. 

June 1 Itli. — My wife and I went, this morning, to 
the Academy of Fine Arts, and, on our way thither, 
went into the Duomo, where w^e found a deliciously 
cool twilight, through which shone the mild gleam of 
the painted windows. I cannot but think it a pity 
that St. Peter's is not lighted by such windows as 
these, although I by no means saw the glory in them 
now that I have spoken of in a record of my former 
visit. We found out the monument of Giotto, a 
tablet, and portrait in bas-relief, on the walk, near the 
entrance of the Cathedral, on the right hand j also, a 
representation, in fresco, of a knight on horseback, 
the memorial of one John Ilawkwood, close by the 
door, to the left. The priests were chanting a service 
of some kind or other in the choir, terribly inharmo- 
nious, and out of tune 

On reaching the Academy, the soldier or policeman 
at the entrance directed us into the large hall, the 
walls of which were covered on both sides with pictures, 
arranged as nearly as possible in a progressive series, 
with reference to the date of the painters j so that 
here the origin and procession of the art may be 
traced through the course of, at least, two hundred 
years. Giotto, Cimabue, and others of unfamiliar 



1858.] ITALY. 37 

names to me, are among the earliest ; and, except as 
curiosities, I should never desire to look once at them, 
nor think of looking twice. They seem to have been 
executed with great care and conscientiousness, and 
the heads are often wrought out with minuteness and 
fidelity, and have so much expression that they tell 
their own story clearly enough ; but it seems not to 
have been the painter's aim to effect a lifelike illusion, 
the background and accessories being conventional. 
The trees are no more like real trees than the feather 
of a pen, and there is no perspective, the figure of the 
picture being shadowed forth on a surface of burnished 
gold. The effect, when these pictures, some of them 
very large, were new and freshly gilded, must have 
been exceedingly brilliant, and much resembling, on 
an immensely larger scale, the rich illuminations in an 
old monkish missal. In fact, we have not now, in pic- 
torial ornament, anything at all comparable to what 
their splendor must have been. I was most struck 
with a picture, by Fabriana Gentile, of the Adoration 
of the Magi, where the faces and figures have a great 
deal of life and action, and even gra.ce, and where the 
jewelled crowns, the rich embroidered robes, and cloth 
of gold, and all the magnificence of the three kings, 
are represented with the vividness of the real thing : 
a gold sword-hilt, for instance, or a pair of gold spurs, 
being actually embossed on the picture. The effect is 
very powerful, and though produced in what modern 
painters would pronounce an unjustifiable way, there 
is yet pictorial art enough to reconcile it to the spec- 
tator's mind. Certainly, the people of the Middle Ages 



38 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858, 

knew better than ourselves what is magnificence, and 
how to produce it ; and what a glorious work must 
that have been, both in its mere sheen of burnished 
gold, and in its illuminating art, which shines thus 
through the gloom of perhaps four centuries. 

Fra Angelico is a man much admired by those 
who have a taste for Pre-Raphaelite painters; and, 
though I take little or no pleasure in his works, I can 
see that there is great delicacy of execution in his 
heads, and that generally he produces such a Christ, 
and such a Virgin, and such saints, as he could not 
have foreseen, except in a pure and holy imagination, 
nor have wrought out without saying a prayer between 
every two touches of his brush. I might come to like 
him, in time, if I thought it worth while ; but it is 
enough to have an outside perception of his kind and 
degree of merit, and so to let him pass into the garret 
of oblivion, where many things as good, or better, are 
piled away, that our own age may not stumble over 
them. Perugino is the first painter whose works seem 
really worth preserving for the genuine merit that is 
in them, apart from any quaintness and curiosity of 
an ancient and new-born art. Probably his religion 
was more genuine than Raphael's, and therefore the 
Virgin often revealed herself to him in a loftier and 
sweeter face of divine womanhood than all the genius 
of Raphael could produce. There is a Crucifixion 
by him in this gallery, which made me partly feel as if 
I were a far-off" spectator, — no, I did not mean a Cru- 
cifixion, but a picture of Christ dead, lying, with a calm, 
sweet face, on his mother's knees ["A Pieta"]. 



1858.] ITALY. 39 

The most inadequate and utterly absurd picture 
here, or in any other gallery, is a head of the Eternal 
Father, by Carlo Dolce ; it looks like a feeble saint, 
on the eve of martyrdom, and very doubtful how he 
shall be able to bear it; very finely and prettily 
painted, nevertheless. 

After getting through the principal gallery we went 
into a smaller room, in which are contained a great 
many small specimens of the old Tuscan artists, 
among whom Fra Angelico makes the principal figure. 
These pictures are all on wood, and seem to have been 
taken from the shrines and altars of ancient churches ; 
they are predellas and tryptiches, or pictures on three 
folding tablets, shaped quaintly, in Gothic peaks or 
arches, and still gleaming with backgrounds of antique 
gold. The wood is much worm-eaten, and the colors 
have often faded or changed from what the old artists 
meant them to be ; a bright angel darkening into 
what looks quite as much like the Devil. In one of 
Fra Angelico's pictures, — a representation of the 
Last Judgment, — he has tried his saintly hand at 
making devils indeed, and showing them busily at 
work, tormenting the poor, damned souls in fifty 
ghastly ways. Above sits Jesus, with the throng of 
blessed saints around him, and a flow of tender and 
powerful love in his own face, that ought to suffice to 
redeem all the damned, and convert the very fiends, 
and quench the fires of hell. At any rate, Fra An- 
gelico had a higher conception of his Saviour than 
Michael Angelo. 

June \^ih. — This forenoon we have been to the 



40 FKENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

Church of St. Lorenzo, which stands on the site of an 
ancient basilica, and was itself built more than four 
centuries ago. The fagade is still an ugly height of 
rough brickwork, as is the case with the Duomo, and, 
I think, some other churches in Florence ; the design 
of giving them an elaborate and beautiful finish 
having been delayed from cycle to cycle, till at length 
the day for spending mines of wealth on churches is 
gone by. The interior had a nave with a flat roof, 
divided from the side-aisles by Corinthian pillars, and, 
at the farther end, a raised space around the high 
altar. The pavement is a mosaic of squares of black 
and white marble, the squares -meeting one another 
corner wise ; the pillars, pilasters, and other architec- 
tural material is dark brown or grayish stone ; and the 
general effect is very sombre, especially as the church 
is somewhat dimly lighted, and as the shrines along 
the aisles, and the statues, and the monuments of 
whatever kind, look dingy with time and neglect. 
The nave is thickly set with wooden seats, brown and 
worn. What pictures there are, in the shrines and 
chapels, are dark and faded. On the whole, the 
edifice has a shabby aspect. On each side of the 
high altar, elevated on four pillars of beautiful marble, 
is what looks like a great sarcophagus of bronze. 
They are, in fact, pulpits, and are ornamented with 
mediaeval bas-reliefs, representing scenes in the life of 
our Saviour. Murray says that the resting-place of 
the first Cosmo di Medici, the old banker, who so man- 
aged his wealth as to get the posthumous title of 
'^ father of his country," and to make his posterity its 



1858.] ITALY. 41 

reigning princes, is in front of the high altar, marked 
by red and green porphyry and marble, inlaid into 
the pavement. We looked, but could not see it 
there. 

There were worshippers at some of the shrines, and 
persons sitting here and there along the nave, and in 
the aisles, wrapt in devotional thought, doubtless, and 
sheltering themselves here from the white sunshine of 
the piazzas. In the vicinity of the choir and the high 
altar, workmen were busy repairing the church, or 
perhaps only making arrangements for celebrating the 
great festival of St. John. 

On the left hand of the choir is what is called the 
old sacristy, with the peculiarities or notabilities of 
which I am not acquainted. On the right hand is the 
new sacristy, otherwise called the Capella dei Deposits, 
or Chapel of the Buried, built by Michael Angelo, to 
contain two monuments of the Medici family. The 
interior is of somewhat severe and classic architecture, 
the walls and pilasters being of dark stone, and 
surmounted by a dome, beneath which is a row of win- 
dows, quite round the building, throwing their light 
down far beneath, upon niches of white marble. These 
niches are ranged entirely around the chapel, and 
might have sufficed to contain more than all the Medici 
monuments that the world would ever care to have. 
Only two of these niches are filled, however. In one 
of them sits Giuliano di Medici, sculptured by Michael 
Angelo, — a figure of dignity, which would perliaps be 
very striking in any other presence than that of the 
statue which occupies the corresponding niche. At 



42 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

the feet of Giuliano recline two allegorical statues, Daj 
and Night, whose meaning there I do not know, and 
perhaps Michael Angelo knew as little. As the great 
sculptor's statues are apt to do, they fling their limbs 
abroad with adventurous freedom. Below the corre- 
sponding niche, on the opposite side of the chapel, 
recline two similar statues, representing Morning and 
Evening, sufliciently like Day and Night to be their 
brother and sister ; all, in truth, having sprung from 

the same father 

But the statue that sits above these two latter 
allegories, Morning and Evening, is like no other that 
ever came from a sculptor's hand. It is the one work 
worthy of Michael Angelo's reputation, and grand 
enough to vindicate for him all the genius that the 
world gave him credit for. And yet it seems a simple 
thing enough to think of or to execute ; merely a sit- 
ting figure, the face partly overshadowed by a helmet, 
one hand supporting the chin, the other resting on the 
thigh. But after looking at it a little while, the spec- 
tator ceases to think of it as a marble statue ; it comes 
to life, and you see that the princely figure is brooding 
over, some great design, which, when he has arranged 
in his own mind, the world will be fain to execute for 
him. No such grandeur and majesty has elsewhere 
been put into human shape. It is all a miracle ; the 
deep repose, and the deep life within it. It is as much 
a miracle to have achieved this as to make a statue 
that would rise up and walk. The face, when one 
gazes earnestly into it, beneath the shadow of its 
helmet, is seen to be calmly sombre ; a mood which, I 



1858.] ITALY. 43 

think, is generally that of the rulers of mankind, 
except in moments of vivid action. This statue is one 
of the things which I look at with highest enjoyment, 
but also with grief and impatience, because I feel that 
I do not come at all which it involves, and that by 
and by I must go away and leave it forever. How 
wonderful ! To take a block of marble, and convert it 
wholly into thought, and to do it through all the 
obstructions and impediments of drapery ; for there is 
nothing nude in this statue but the face and hands. 
The vest is the costume of Michael Angelo's century. 
This is what I always thought a sculptor of true genius 
should be able to do, — to show the man of whatever 
epoch, nobly and heroically, through the costume 
which he might actually have worn. 

The statue sits within a square niche of white 
marble, and completely fills it. It seems to me a pity 
that it should be thus confined. At the Crystal 
Palace, if I remember, the effect is improved by a free 
sun'ounding space. Its naturalness is as if it came 
out of the marble of its own accord, with all its 
grandeur hanging heavily about it, and sat down 
there beneath its weight. I cannot describe it. It 
is like trying to stop the ghost of Hamlet's father, by 
crossing spears before it. 

Communicating with the sacristy is the Medicean 
Chapel, which was built more than two centuries ago, 
for the reception of the Holy Sepulchre ; arrangements 
having been made about that time to steal this most 
sacred relic from the Turks. The design failing, the 
chapel was converted by Cosmo 11. into a place of 



44 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

sepulture for the princes of his family. It is a very 
grand and solemn edifice, octagonal in shape, with a 
lofty dome, within which is a series of brilliant fres- 
cos, painted not more than thirty years ago. These 
pictures are the only portion of the adornment of the 
chapel which interferes with the sombre beauty of the 
general effect ; for though the walls are incrusted, 
from pavement to dome, with marbles of inestimable 
cost, and it is a Florentine mosaic on a grander scale 
than was ever executed elsewhere, the result is not 
gaudy, as in many of the Roman chapels, but a dark 
and melancholy richness. The architecture strikes 
me as extremely fine ; each alternate side of the octa- 
gon being an arch, rising as high as the cornice of the 
lofty dome, and forming the frame of a vast niche. All 
the dead princes, no doubt, according to the general 
design, were to have been honored with statues within 
this stately mausoleum ; but only two — those of Fer- 
dinand I. and Cosmo II. — seem to have been placed 
here. They were a bad breed, and few of them 
deserved any better monument than a dung-hill ; and 
yet they have this grand chapel for the family at 
large, and yonder grand statue for one of its most 
worthless members. I am glad of it ; and as for the 
statue, Michael Angelo wrought it through the efficacy 
of a kingly idea, which had no reference to the 
individual whose name it bears. 

In the piazza, adjoining the church, is a statue of 
the first Cosmo, the old banker, in Roman costume, 
seated, and looking like a man fit to hold authority. 
No, I mistake j the statue is of John di Medici, the 



1858.] ITALY. 45 

father of Cosmo, and himself no banker, but a sol- 
dier. 

June 21s^. — Yesterday, after dinner, we went with 

the two eldest children, to the Boboli Gardens 

We entered by a gate, nearer to onr house than that 
by the Pitti Palace, and found ourselves almost imme- 
diately among embowered walks of box and shrubbery, 
and little wildernesses of trees, with here and there a 
seat under an arbor, and a marble statue, gray with 
ancient weather-stains. The site of the garden is a 
very uneven surface, and the paths go upward and 
downward, and ascend, at their ultimate point, to a 
base of what appears to be a fortress, commanding the 
city. A good many of the Florentines were rambling 
about the gardens, like ourselves; little parties of 
school-boys, fathers and mothers, with their youth- 
ful progeny; young men in couples, looking closely 
into every female face ; lovers, with a maid or two at- 
tendant on the young lady. All appeared to enjoy 
themselves, especially the children, dancing on the 
esplanades, or rolling down the slopes of the hills; 
and the loving pairs, whom it was rather embarrassing 
to come upon unexpectedly, sitting together on the 
stone seat of an arbor, with clasped hands, a passion- 
ate solemnity in the young man's face, and a downcast 
pleasure in the lady's. Policemen, in cocked hats and 
epaulets, cross-belts, and swords, were scattered about 
the gi'ounds, but interfered with nobody, though they 
seemed to keep an eye on all. A sentinel stood in the 
hot sunshine, looking down over the garden from the 
ramparts of the fortress. . 



46 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

For my part, in this foreign country, I have no 
objection to policemen or any other minister of author- 
ity ; though I remember, in America, I had an innate 
antipathy to constables, and always sided with the 
mob against law. This was very wrong and foolish, 
considering that I was one of the sovereigns ; but a 
sovereign, or any number of sovereigns, or the twenty- 
millionth part of a sovereign, does not love to find 
himself, as an American must, included within the 
delegated authority of his own servants. 

There is a sheet of water somewhere in the Boboli 
Gardens, inhabited by swans; but this we did not 
see. We found a smaller pond, however, set in 
marble, and surrounded by a parapet, and alive with 
a multitude of fish. There were minnows by the 

thousand, and a good many gold-fish; and J , 

who had brought some bread to feed the swans, 
threw in handful s of crumbs for the benefit of these 
finny people. They seemed to be accustomed to 
such courtesies on the part of visitors; and imme- 
diately the surface of the water was blackened, at 
the spot where each crumb fell, with shoals of min- 
nows, thrusting one another even above the surface 
in their eagerness to snatch it. Within the depths 
of the pond, the yellowish-green water — its hue being 
precisely that of the Arno — would be reddened dusk- 
ily with the larger bulk of two or three gold-fishes, 
who finally poked their great snouts up among the 
minnows, but generally missed the crumb. Beneath 
the circular margin of the pond, there are little 
arches, into the shelter of which the fish retire, when 



1858.] ITALY. 47 

the noonday sun burns straight down into their dark 
waters. We went on through the garden-paths, 
shadowed quite across by the high walls of box, 
and reached an esplanade, whence we had a good 
view of Florence, with the bare brown ridges on the 
northern side of the Arno, and glimpses of the river 
itself, flowing like a street, between two rows of 
palaces. A great way off, too, we saw some of the 
cloud-like peaks of the Apennines, and, above them, 
the clouds into which the sun was descending, look- 
ing quite as substantial as the distant mountains. 
The city did not present a particularly splendid 
aspect, though its great Duomo was seen in the 
middle distance, sitting in its circle of little domes, 
with the tall campanile close by, and within one or 
two hundred yards of it, the high, cumbrous bulk 
of the Palazzo Vecchio, with its lofty, machicolated, 
and battlemented tower, very picturesque, yet looking 
exceedingly like a martin-box, on a pole. There 
were other domes and towers and spires, and here 
and there the distinct shape of an edifice; but the 
general picture was of a contiguity of red, earthen 
roofs, filling a not very broad or extensive valley, 
among dry and ridgy hills, with a river-gleam 

lightening up the landscape a little. U took 

out her pencil and tablets, and began to sketch the 
tower of the Palazzo Vecchio j in doing which, she 
immediately became an object of curiosity to some 
little boys and larger people, who failed not, under 
such pretences as taking a grasshopper off her dress, 
or no. pretence at all, to come and look over her 



48 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

'shoulder. There is a kind of familiarity among these 
Florentines, which is not meant to be discourteous, 
and ought to be taken in good part. 

We continued to ramble through the gardens, in 
quest of a good spot from which to see the sunset, 
and at length found a stone bench, on the slope of 
a hill, whence the entire cloud and sun scenery was 
fully presented to us. At the foot of the hill were 
statues, and among them a Pegasus, with wings out- 
spread ; and, a little beyond, the garden-front of the 
Pitti Palace, which looks a little less like a state 
j)rison here, than as it fronts the street. Girls and 
children, and young men and old, were taking their 
pleasure in our neighborhood ; and, just before us, 
a lady stood talking with her maid. By and by, we 
discovered her to be Miss Howorth. There was a 
misty light, streaming down on the hither side of 
the ridge of hills, that was rather peculiar ; but the 
most remarkable thing was the shape into which the 
clouds gathered themselves, after the disappearance 
of the sun. It was like a tree, with a broad and 
heavy mass of foliage, spreading high upward on the 
sky, and a dark and well-defined trunk, which rooted 
itself on the verge of the horizon. 

This morning we went to the Pitti Palace. The 
air was very sultry, and the pavements, already 
heated with the sun, made the space between the 
buildings seem like a close room. The earth, I 
think, is too much stoned out of the streets of an 
Italian city, — paved, like those of Florence, quite 
across, with broad flagstones, to the line where the 



1858.] ITALY. 49 

stones of the houses on each side are piled up. 
Thunder rumbled over our heads, however, and the 
clouds were so dark that we scarcely hoped to reach 
the palace without feeling the first drops of the 
shower. The air still darkened and darkened, so 
that by the time we arrived at the suite of picture- 
rooms the pictures seemed all to be changed to 
Rembrandts ; the shadows as black as midnight, 
with only some highly illuminated portions gleaming 
out. The obscurity of the atmosphere made us sen- 
sible how splendid is the adornment of these saloons. 
For the gilded cornices shone out, as did the gilding 
of the arches and wreathed circles that divide the 
ceiling into compartments, within which the frescos 
are painted, and whence the figures looked dimly 
down, like gods out of a mysterious sky. The white 
marble sculptures also gleamed from their height, 
where winged cupids or cherubs gambolled aloft in 
bas-reliefs ; or allegoric shapes reclined along the 
cornices, hardly noticed, when the daylight comes 
brightly into the window. On the walls, all the rich 
picture-frames glimmered in gold, as did the frame- 
work of the chairs, and the heavy gilded pedestals 
of the marble, alabaster, and mosaic tables. These 
are very magnificent saloons ; and since I have begun 
to speak of their splendor, I may as well add that 
the doors are framed in polished, richly veined marble, 
and the walls hung with scarlet damask. 

It was useless to try to see the pictures. All the 
artists engaged in copying laid aside their brushes ; 
and we looked out into the square before the palace, 

VOL. II. 3 D 



50 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

where a mighty wind sprang up, and quickly raised 
a prodigious cloud of dust. It hid the opposite side 
of the street, and was carried, in a great dusky whirl, 
higher than the roofs of the houses, higher than the 
top of the Pitti Palace itself The thunder muttered 
and grumbled, the lightning now and. then flashed, 
and a few rain-drops pattered against the windows; 
but, for a long time, the shower held off. At last it 
came down in a stream, and lightened the air to 
such a degree that we could see some of the pictures, 
especially those of Kubens, and the illuminated parts 
of Salvator Rosa's, and, best of all, Titian's "Magdalen," 
the one with golden hair, clustering round her naked 
body. The golden hair, indeed, seemed to throw 
out a glory of its own. This Magdalen is very coarse 
and sensual, with only an impudent assumption of 
penitence and religious sentiment, scarcely so deep 
as the eyelids ; but it is a splendid picture, neverthe- 
less, with those naked, lifelike arms, and the hands 
that press the rich locks about her, and so carefully 
permit those voluptuous breasts to be seen. She a 
penitent ! She would shake off all pretence to it as 
easily as she would shake aside that clustering 
hair. . . . . Titian must have been a very good-for- 
nothing did man. 

I looked again at Michael Angelo's Fates to-day; 
but cannot satisfactorily make out what he meant by 
them. One of them — she who holds the distaff — has 
her mouth open, as if uttering a cry, and might be 
fancied to look somewhat irate. The second, who 
holds the thread, has a pensive air, but is still, I 



1858.] ITALY. 51 

think, pitiless at heart. The third sister looks closely 
and coldly into the eyes of the second, meanwhile 
cutting the thread with a pair of shears. Michael 
Angelo, if I may presume to say so, wished to vary 
the expression of these three sisters, and give each a 
different one, but did not see precisely how, inasmuch 
as all the fatal Three are united, heart and soul, in 
one purpose. It is a very impressive group. But, as 
regards the interpretation of this, or of any other 
profound picture, there are likely to be as many 
interpretations as there are spectators. It is very 
curious to read criticisms upon pictures, and upon 
the same face in a picture, and by men of taste and 
feeling, and to find what different conclusions they 
arrive at. Each man interprets the hieroglyphic in 
his own way ; and the painter, perhaps, had a mean- 
ing which none of them have reached ; or possibly 
he put forth a riddle without himself knowing the 
solution. There is such a necessity, at all events, of 
helping the painter out with the spectator's own 
resources of feeling and imagination, that you can 
never be sure how much of the picture you have 
yourself made. There is no doubt that the public is, 
to a certain extent, right and sure of its ground, when 
it declares, through a series of ages, that a certain 
picture is a great work. It is so ; a great symbol, 
proceeding out of a great mind ; but if it means one 
thing, it seems to mean a thousand, and, often, oppo- 
site things. 

June 21th. — I have had a heavy cold and fever 
almost throughout the past week, and have thereby 



52 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

lost the great Florentine festivity, the Feast of St. 
John, which took place on Thursday last, with the 
fireworks and illuminations the evening before, and 
the races and court ceremonies on the day itself. 
However, unless it were more characteristic and pecu- 
liar than the Carnival, I have not missed anything 
very valuable. 

Mr. Powers called to see me one evening, and 
poured out, as usual, a stream of talk, both racy and 
oracular in its character. Speaking of human eyes, 
he observed that they did not depend for their ex- 
pression upon color, nor upon any light of the soul 
beaming through them, nor any glow of the eyeball, 
nor upon anything but the form and action of the 
surrounding muscles. He illustrates it by saying, 
that if the eye of a wolf, or of whatever fiercest 
animal, could be placed in another setting, it would 
be found capable of the utmost gentleness of expres- 
sion. " You yourself," said he, " have a very bright 
and sharp look sometimes ; but it is not in the eye 
itself" His own eyes, as I could have sworn, were 
glowing all the time he spoke ; and, remembering how 
many times I have seemed to see eyes glow, and blaze, 
and flash, and sparkle, and melt, and soften ; and how 
all poetry is illuminated with the light of ladies' eyes ; 
and how many people have been smitten by the 
lightning o-f an eye, whether in love or auger, it was 
difficult to allow that all this subtlest and keenest fire 
is illusive, not even phosphorescent, and that any 
other jelly in the same socket would serve as well as 
the brightest eye. Nevertheless, he must be right ; 



1858.] ITALY. 53 

of course he must, and I am rather ashamed ever 
to have thought otherwise. Where should the light 
come from *? Has a man a jflame inside of his head 1 
Does his spirit manifest itself in the semblance of 
flame] The moment we think of it, the absurdity 
becomes evident. I am not quite sure, however, that 
the outer surface of the eye may not reflect more light 
in some states of feeling than in others ; the state of 
the health, certainly, has an influence of this kind. 

I asked Powers what he thought of Michael Angelo's 
statue of Lorenzo di Medici. He allowed that its 
eflbct was ver}'^ grand and mysterious ; but added 
that it owed this to a trick, — the effect being pro- 
duced by the arrangement of the hood, as he called it, 
or helmet, which throws the upper part of the face 
into shadow. The niche in which it sits has, I sup- 
pose, its part to perform in throwing a still deeper 
shadow. It is very possible that Michael Angelo may 
have calculated upon this effect of sombre shadow, 
and legitimately, I think ; but it really is not worthy 
of Mr. Powers to say that the whole effect of this 
mighty statue depends, not on the positive efforts of 
Michael Angelo's chisel, but on the absence of light in 
a space of a few inches. He wrought the whole statue 
in harmony with that small part of it which he leaves 
to the spectator's imagination, and if he had erred at 
any point, the miracle would have been a failure ; so 
that, working in marble, he has positively reached a 
degree of excellence above the capability of marble, 
sculpturing his highest touches upon air and duski- 
ness. 



54 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

Mr. Powet-s gave some amusing anecdotes of his 
early life, when he was a clerk in a store in Cincin- 
nati. There was a museum opposite, the proprietor 
of which had a peculiar physiognomy that struck 
Powers, insomuch that he felt impelled to make con- 
tinual caricatures of it. He used to draw them upon 
the door of the museum, and became so familiar with 
the face, that he could draw them in the dark; so 
that, every morning, here was this absurd profile of 
himself, greeting the museum-man when he came to 
open his establishment. Often, too, it would reappear 
within an hour after it was rubbed out. The man 
was infinitely annoyed, and made all possible efforts 
to discover the unknown artist, but in vain ; and 
finally concluded, I suppose, that the likeness broke 
out upon the door of its own accord, like the nettle- 
rash. Some years afterwards, the proprietor of the 
museum engaged Powers himself as an assistant ; and 
one day Powers asked him if he remembered this 
mysterious profile. " Yes," said he, " did jou know 
who drew them li " Powers took a piece of chalk, and 
touched off the very profile again, before the man's 
eyes. " Ah," said he, " if I had known it at the time, 
I would have broken every bone in your body ! " 

Before he began to work in marble. Powers had 
greater practice and success in making wax figures, 
and he produced a work of this kind called " The In- 
fernal Regions," which he seemed to imply had been 
very famous. He said he once wrought a face in wax 
which was life itself, having made the eyes on purpose 
for it, and put in every hair in the eyebrows individ- 



1858.] ITALY. 55 

ually, and finished the whole with similar minuteness ; 
so that, within the distance of a foot or two, it was 
impossible to tell that the face did not live. 

I have hardly ever before felt an impulse to write 
down a man's conversation as I do that of Mr. Powers. 
The chief reason is, probably, that it is so possible to 
do it, his ideas being square, solid, and tangible, and 
therefore readily grasped and retained. He is a very 
instructive man, and sweeps one's empty and dead no- 
tions out of the way with exceeding vigor ; but when 
you have his ultimate thought and perception, you 
feel inclined to think and see a little further for your- 
self. He sees too clearly what is within his range to 
be aware of any region of mystery beyond. Probably, 
however, this latter remark does him injustice. I like 
the man, and am always glad to encounter the mill- 
stream of his talk Yesterday he met me in the 

street (dressed in his linen blouse and slippers, with 
a little bit of a sculptor's cap on the side of his head), 
and gave utterance to a theory of colds, and a disserta- 
tion on the bad effects of draughts, whether of cold air 
or hot, and the dangers of transfusing blood from the 
veins of one living subject to those of another. On 
the last topic, he remarked that if a single particle of 
air found its way into the veins, along with the trans- 
fused blood, it caused convulsions and inevitable 
death; otherwise the process might be of excellent 
effect. 

Last evening, we went to pass the evening with 
Miss Blagden, who inhabits a villa at Bellosquardo, 
about a mile outside of the walls. The situation is 



56 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

very lofty, and there are good views from every win- 
dow of the house, and an especially fine one of Flor- 
ence and the hills beyond, from the balcony of the 
drawing-room. By and by came Mr. Browning, Mr. 
Troilope, Mr. Boott and his young daughter, and two 
or three other gentlemen 

Browning was very genial and full of life, as usual, 
but his conversation has the effervescent aroma which 
you cannot catch, even if you get the very words that 
seem to be imbued with it. He spoke most raptur- 
ously of a portrait of Miss Browning, which an Ital- 
ian artist is painting for the wife of an American gen- 
tleman, as a present from her husband. The success 
was already perfect, although there had been only two 
sittings as yet, and both on the same day ; and in this 

relation, Mr. Browning remarked that P -, the 

American artist, had had no less than seventy-three 
sittings of him for a portrait. In the result, every 
hair and sj^eck of him was represented ; yet, as I in- 
ferred from what he did not say, this accumulation of 
minute truths did not, after all, amount to the true 
whole. 

I do not remember much else that Browning said, 
except a playful abuse of a little King Charles spaniel, 
named Frolic, Miss Blagden's lap-dog, whose venerable 
age (he is eleven years old) ought to have pleaded in 
his behalf. Browning's nonsense is of very genuine 
and excellent quality, the true babble and effervescence 
of a bright and powerful mind ; and he lets it play 
among his friends with the faith and simplicity of a 
child. He must be an amiable man. I should like 



1858.] ITALY. 57 

him much, and should make him like me, if oppor- 
tunities were favorable. 

I conversed principally with Mr. Trollope, the son, 
I believe, of the Mrs. Trollope to whom America owes 
more for her shrewd criticisms than we are ever likely 
to repay. Mr. Trollope is a very sensible and culti- 
vated man, and, I suspect, an author : at least, there 
is a literary man of repute of this name, though I 
have never read his works. He has resided in Italy 
eighteen years. It seems a pity to do this. It needs 
the native air to give life a reality ; a truth which I 
do not fail to take home regretfully to myself, though 
without feeling much inclination to go back to the 
realities of my own. 

We had a pleasant cup of tea, and took a moonlight 
view of Florence from the balcony 

June IWi. — Yesterday afternoon, J and I 

went to a horse-race, which took place in the Corso 
and contiguous line of streets, in further celebration 
of the Feast of St. John. A crowd of people was al- 
ready collected, all along the line of the proposed race, 
as early as six o'clock ; and there were a great many 
carriages driving amid the throng, open barouches 
mostly, in w^hich the beauty and gentility of Flor- 
ence were freely displayed. It was a repetition of 
the scene in the Corso at Rome, at Carnival time, 
without the masks, the fun, and the confetti. The 
Grand Duke and Duchess and the Court likewise made 
their appearance in as many as seven or eight coaches- 
and-six, each with a coachman, three footmen, and a 
postilion in the royal livery, and attended by a troop 
3* 



58 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

of horsemen in scarlet coats and cocked hats. I did 
not particularly notice the Grand Duke himself; but, 
in the carriage behind him, there sat only a lady, who 
favored the people along the street with a constant 
succession of bows, repeated at such short intervals, 
and so quickly, as to be little more than nods ; there- 
fore not particularly graceful or majestic. Haviug 
the good fortune to be favored with one of these nods, 
I lifted my hat in response, and may therefore claim 
a bowing acqiiaintance with the Grand Duchess. She 
is a Bourbon of the Naples family, and was a pale, 
handsome woman, of princely aspect enough. The 
crowd evinced no enthusiasm, nor the slightest feeling 
of any kind, in acknowledgment of the presence of 
their rulers ; and, indeed, I think I never saw a crowd 
so well behaved ; that is, with so few salient points, 
so little ebullition, so absolutely tame, as the Floren- 
tine one. After all, and much contrary to my expec- 
tations, an American crowd has incomparably more 
life than any other ; and, meeting on any casual occa- 
sion, it will talk, laugh, roar, and be diversified with 
a thousand characteristic incidents and gleams and 
shadows, that you see nothing of here. The people 
seems to have no part even in its own gatherings. It 
comes together merely as a mass of spectators, and 
must not so much as amuse itself by any activity of 
mind. 

The race, which was the attraction that drew us all 
together, turned out a very pitiful afiair. When we 
had waited till nearly dusk, the street being thronged 
quite across, insomuch that it seemed impossible that 



1858.] ITALY. 59 

it should be cleared as a race-course, there came sud- 
denly from every throat a quick, sharp exclamation, 
combining into a general shout. Immediately the 
crowd pressed back on each side of the street ; a 
moment afterwards, there was a rapid pattering of 
hoofs over the earth with which the pavement was 
strewn, and I saw the head and back of a horse rush- 
ing past. A few seconds more, and another horse 
followed ; and at another little interval, a third. This 
was all that we had waited for; all that I saw, or 
anybody else, except those who stood on the utmost 
verge of the course, at the risk of being trampled 
down and killed. Two men were killed in this way 
on Thursday, and certainly l^uman life was never 
spent for a poorer object. The spectators at the 
windows, to be sure, having the horses in sight for a 
longer time, might get a little more enjoyment out of 
the affair. By the by, the most picturesque aspect of 
the scene was the life given to it by the many faces, 
some of them fair ones, that looked out from window 
and" balcony, all along the curving line of lofty palaces 
and edifices, between which the race-course lay ; and 
from nearly eveiy window, and over every balcony, 
was flung a silken texture, or cloth of brilliant hue, or 
piece of tapestry or carpet, or whatever adornment of 
the kind could be had, so as to dress up the street in 
gala attire. But the Feast of St. John, like the Carni- 
val, is but a meagre semblance of festivity, kept alive 
factitiously, and dying a lingering death of centuries. 
It takes the exuberant mind and heart of a people to 
keep its holidays alive. 



60 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

I do not know whether there be any populace in 
Florence, but I saw none that I recognized as such, 
on this occasion. All the people were respectably 
dressed and perfectly well behaved ; and soldiers and 
priests were scattered abundantly among the throng. 
On my way home, I saw the Teatro Goldoni, which is 
in our own street, lighted up for a representation this 
Sunday evening. It shocked my New England preju- 
dices a little. 

This forenoon, my wife and I went to the Church of 
Santa Croce, the great monumental deposit of Flor- 
entine worthies. The piazza before it is a wide, 
gravelled square, where the liberty of Florence, if it 
really ever had any genuine liberty, came into exist- 
ence some hundreds of years ago, by the people's 
taking its own rights into its hands, and putting its 
own immediate will in execution. The piazza has not 
much appearance of antiquity, except -that the fagade 
of one of the houses is quite covered with ancient 
frescos, a good deal faded and obliterated, yet with 
traces enough of old glory to show that the colors 
must have been well laid on. 

The front of the church, the foundation of which 
was laid six centuries ago, is still waiting for its casing 
of marbles, and I suppose will wait forever, though a 
carpenter's staging is now erected before it, as if with 
the purpose of doing something. 

The interior is spacious, the length of the church 
being between four and five hundred feet. There is a 
nave, roofed with wooden cross-beams, lighted by a 
clcre-story and supported on each side by seven great 



1858.] ITALY. 61 

pointed arches, which rest upon octagonal pillars. 
The octagon seems to be a favorite shape in Florence. 
These pillars were clad in yellow and scarlet damask, 
in honor of the Feast of St. John. The aisles, on 
each side of the nave, are lighted with high and some- 
what narrow windows of painted glass, the effect of 
which, however, is much diminished by the flood of 
common daylight that comes in through the windows 
of the clere-story. It is like admitting too much of the 
light of reason and worldly intelligence into the mind, 
instead of illuminating it wholly through a rehgious 
medium. The many-hued saints and angels lose their 
mysterious effulgence, when we get white light enough, 
and find we see all the better without their help. 

The main pavement of the church is brickwork ; 
but it is inlaid with many sepulchral slabs of marble, 
on some of which knightly or priestly figures are 
sculptured in bas-relief. In both of the side-aisles 
there are saintly shrines, alternating with mural 
monuments, some of which record names as illus- 
trious as any in the world. As you enter, the first 
monument on your right is that of Michael Angelo, 
occupying the ancient burial site of his family. The 
general design is a heavy sarcophagus of colored 
marble, with the figures of Sculpture, Painting, and 
Architecture as mourners, and Michael Angelo' s bust 
above, the whole assuming a pyramidal form. You 
pass a shrine, within its framework of marble pillars 
and a pediment, and come next to Dante's monu- 
ment, a modern work, with likewise its sarcophagus, 
and some huge, cold images weeping and sprawling 



62 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

over it, and an unimpressive statue of Dante sitting 
above.. 

Another shrine intervenes, and next you see the 
tomb of Alfieri, erected to his memory by the Count- 
ess of Albany, who pays, out of a woman's love, the 
honor which his country owed him. Her own monu- 
ment is in one of the chapels of the transept. 

Passing the next shrine you see the tomb of Mac- 
chiavelli, which, I think, was constructed not many 
years after his death. The rest of the monuments, 
on this side of the church, commemorate people of 
less than world-wide fame ; and though the opposite 
side has likewise a monument alternating with each 
shrine, I remember only the names of Raphael Mor- 
ghem and of Galileo. The tomb of the latter is over 
against that of Michael Angelo, being the first large 
tomb on the left-hand wall as you enter the church. 
It has the usual heavy sarcophagus, surmounted by a 
bust of Galileo, in the habit of his time, and is, of 
course, duly provided with mourners in the shape 
of Science or Astronomy, or some such cold-hearted 
people. I wish every sculptor might be at once 
imprisoned for life who shall hereafter chisel an alle- 
goric figure ; and as for those who have sculptured 
them heretofore, let them be kept in pnrgatory till the 
marble shall have crumbled away. It is especially 
absurd to assign to this frozen sisterhood of the 
allegoric family the office of weeping for the dead, 
inasmuch as they have incomparably less feeling than 
a lump of ice, which might contrive to shed a tear 
if the sun shone on it. But they seem to let them- 



J 858.] ITALY. 63^ 

selves out, like the hired mourners of an English 
funeral, for the very reason that, having no interest 
in the dead person, nor any affections or emotions 
whatever, it costs them no wear and tear of heart. 

All round both transepts of the church there is a 
series of chapels, into most of which we went, and 
generally found an inscrutably dark picture over the 
altar, and often a marble bust or two, or perhaps a 
mediaeval statue of a saint or a modern monumental 
bas-relief in marble, as white as new-fallen snow. 
A chapel of the Bonapartes is here, containing 
memorials of two female members of the family. In 
several chapels, moreover, there were some of those 
distressing frescos by Giotto, Cimabue, or their com- 
peers, which, whenever I see them, — poor, faded relics, 
looking as if the Devil had been rubbing and scrub- 
bing them for centuries, in spite against the saints, — 
my heart sinks and my stomach sickens. There is no 
other despondency like this ; it is a new shade of 
human misery, akin to the physical disease that comes 
from dry-rot in a wall. These frescos are to a church 
what dreary, old remembrances are to a mind ; the 
drearier because they were once bright : Hope fading 
into Disappointment, Joy into Grief, and festal splen- 
dor passing into funereal duskiness, and saddening you 
all the more by the grim identity that you find to exist 
between gay things and sorrowful ones. Only wait 
long enough, and they turn out to be the very same. 

All the time we were in the church some great 
religious ceremony had been going forward ; the 
organ playing and the white-robed priests bowing, 



64 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858.- 

gesticulating, and making Latin prayers at the high 
altar, where at least a hundred wax tapers were 
burning in constellations. Everybody knelt, except 
ourselves, yet seemed not to be troubled by the 
echoes of our passing footsteps, nor to require that 
we should pray along with them. They consider us 
already lost irrevocably, no doubt, and therefore right 
enough in taking no heed of their devotions ; not but 
what we take so much heed, however, as to give the 
smallest possible disturbance. By and by we sat 
down in the nave of the church, till the ceremony 
should be concluded ; and then my wife left me to go 
in quest of yet another chapel, where either Cimabue 
or Giotto, or both, have left some of their now ghastly 
decorations. While she was gone I threw my eyes 
about the church, and came to the conclusion that, 
in spite of its antiquity, its size, its architecture, its 
painted windows, its tombs of great men, and all the 
reverence and interest that broods over them, it is not 
an impressive edifice. Any little Norman church in 
England would impress me as much, and more. 
There is something, I do not know what, but it ia 
in the region of the heart, rather than in the intellect, 
that Italian architecture, of whatever age or style, 
never seems to reach. 

Leaving the Santa Croce, we went next in quest of 
the Riccardi Palace. On our way, in the rear of the 
Grand Ducal Piazza, we passed by the Pargello, former- 
ly the palace of the Podesta of Florence, and now con- 
verted into a prison. It is an immense square edifice 
of dark stone, with a tall, lank tower rising high above 



1858.] ITALY. 65 

it at one corner. Two stone lions, symbols of the city, 
lash their tails and glare at the passers-by; and all 
over the front of the building windows are scattered 
irregularly, and grated with rusty iron bars; also 
there are many square holes, which probably admit a 
little light and a breath or tw^o of air into prisoners' 
cells. It is a very ugly edifice, but looks antique, and 
as if a vast deal of history might have been transacted 
within it, or have beaten, like fierce blasts, against its 
dark, massive walls, since the thirteenth century. 
When I first saw the city it struck me that there were 
few marks of antiquity in Florence ; but I am now in- 
clined to think otherwise, although the bright Italian 
atmosphere, and the general squareness and monotony 
of the Italian architecture, have their effect in appar- 
ently modernizing everything. But everywhere we 
see the ponderous Tuscan basements that never can 
decay, and which will look, five hundred years hence, 
as they look now; and one often passes beneath an 
abbreviated remnant of what was once a lofty tower, 
perhaps three hundred feet high, such as used to be 
numerous in Florence when each noble of the city had 
his own warfare to wage ; and there are patches of 
sculpture that look old on houses, the modern stucco 
of which causes them to look almost new. Here and 
there an unmistakable antiquity stands in its own im- 
pressive shadow ; the Church of Or San Michele, for 
instance, once a market, but v\^hich grew to be a church 
by some inherent fitness and inevitable consecration. 
It has not the least the aspect of a church, being high 
and square, like a mediaeval palace ; but deep and 



66 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

high niches are let into its walls, within which stand 
-great statues of saints, masterpieces of Donatello, and 
other sculptors of that age, before sculpture began to 
be congealed by the influence of Greek art. 

The Riccardi Palace is at the corner of the Via 
Larga. It was built by the first Cosmo di Medici, the 
old banker, more than four centuries ago, and was 
long the home of the ignoble race of princes which he 
left behind him. It looks fit to be still the home of a 
princely race, being nowise dilapidated nor decayed 
externally, nor likely to be so, its high Tuscan base- 
ment being as solid as a ledge of rock, and its upper 
portion not much less so, though smoothed into an- 
other order of stately architecture. Entering its 
court from the Via Larga, we found ourselves beneath 
a pillared arcade, passing "round the court like a clois- 
ter ; and on the walls of the palace, under this succes- 
sion of arches, were statues, bas-reliefs, and sarcophagi, 
in which, first, dead Pagans had slept, and then dead 
Christians, before the sculptured cofiins were brought 
hither to adorn the palace of the Medici. In the 
most prominent place was a Latin inscription of great 
length and breadth, chiefly in praise of old Cosmo and 
his deeds and wisdom. This mansion gives the vis- 
itor a stately notion of the life of a commercial man in 
the days when merchants were princes ; not that it 
seems to be so wonderfully extensive, nor so very 
grand, for I suppose there are a dozen Roman palaces 
that excel it in both these particulars. Still, we can- 
not but be conscious that it must have been, in some 
sense, a great man who thought of founding a home- 



1858.] ITALY. 07 

stead like this, and was capable of filling it with his 
personality, as the hand fills a glove. It has been 
found spacious enough, since Cosmo's time, for an 
emperor and a pope and a king, all of whom have been 
guests in this house. After being the family mansion 
of the Medici for nearly two centuries, it was sold to 
the Eiccardis, but was subsequently bought of them 
by the government, and it is now occupied by public 
offices and societies. 

After sufficiently examining the court and its antiq- 
uities, we ascended a noble staircase that passes, by 
broad flights and square turns, to the region above the 
basement. Here the palace is cut up and portioned 
off into little rooms and passages, and everywhere 
there were desks, inkstands, and men, with pens in 
their fingers or behind their ears. We were shown 
into a little antique chapel, quite covered with fres- 
cos in the Giotto style, but painted by a certain Gon- 
zoli. They were in pretty good preservation, and, in 
fact, I am wrong in comparing them to Giotto's works, 
inasmuch as there must have been nearly two hun- 
dred years between the two artists. The chapel was 
furnished with curiously carved old-chairs, and looked 
surprisingly venerable within its little precinct-. 

We were next guided into the grand gallery, a hall 
of respectable size, with a frescoed ceiling, on which is 
represented the blue sky, and various members of the 
Medici family ascending through it by the help of 
angelic personages, who seem only to have waited for 
their society to be perfectly happy. At least, this was 
the meaning, so far as I could make it out. Along 



68 FRENCPI AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

one side of the gallery were oil pictures on looking- 
glasses, rather good than otherwise ; but Rome, with 
her palaces and villas, takes the splendor out of all 
this sort of thing elsewhere. 

On our way home, and on our own side of the 
Ponte Vecchio, we passed the Palazzo Guicciardini, 
the ancient residence of the historian of Italy, who 
was a politic statesman of his day, and probably as 
cruel and unprincipled as any of those whose deeds 
he has recorded. Opposite, across the narrow way, 
stands the house of Macchiavelli, who was his friend, 
and, I should judge, an honester man than he. The 
house is distinguished by a marble tablet, let into the 
wall, commemorative of Macchiavelli, but has nothing 
antique or picturesque about it, being in a contiguous 
line with other smooth-faced and stuccoed edifices. 

June 30th. — Yesterday, at three o'clock k m., I 
went to see the final horse-race of the Feast of St. 
John, or rather to see the concourse of people and 
grandees whom it brought together. I took my stand 
in the vicinity of the spot whence the Grand Duke 
and his courtiers view the race, and from this point 
the scene was rather better worth looking at than 
from the street-corners whence I saw it before. The 
vista of the street, stretching far adown between two 
rows of lofty edifices, was really gay and gorgeous 
with the silks, damasks, and tapestries of all bright 
hues, that flaunted from windows and balconies, 
whence ladies looked forth and looked down, them- 
selves making the liveliest part of the show. The 
whole capacity of the street swarmed with moving 



1858.] ITALY. 69 

heads, leaving scarce room enough for the carriages, 
which, as on Sunday, passed np and down, until the 
signal for the race was given. Equipages, too, were 
constantly arriving at the door of the building which 
communicates with the open loggia, where the Grand 
Ducal party sit to see and to be seen. Two sentinels 
Avere standing at the door, and presented arms as each 
courtier or ambassador, or whatever dignity it might 
be, alighted. Most of them had on gold-embroidered 
court-dresses ; some of them had military uniforms, 
and medals in abundance at the breast ; and ladies 
also came, looking like heaps of lace and gauze in the 
carriages, but lightly shaking themselves into shape 
as they went up the steps. By and by a trumpet 
sounded, a drum beat, and again appeared a succes- 
sion of half a dozen royal equipages, each with its six 
horses, its postilion, coachman, and three footmen, 
grand with cocked hats and embroidery ; and the 
gray-headed, bowing Grand Duke and his nodding 
Grand Duchess as before. The Noble Guard ranged 
themselves on horseback opposite the loggia ; but 
there was no irksome and impertinent show of cere- 
mony and restraint upon the people. The play -guard 
of volunteer soldiers, who escort the President of the 
United States in his Northern progresses, keep back 
their fellow-citizens much more sternly and immiti- 
gably than the Florentine guard kept back the popu- 
lace from its despotic sovereign. 

This morning J and I have been to the Uffizzi 

gallery. It was his first visit there, and he passed 
a sweeping condemnation upon everj^thing he saw, 



70 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

except a fly, a snail-shell, a caterpillar, a lemon, a 
piece of bread, and a wineglass, in some of the Dutch 
pictures. The Venus di Medici met with no sort of 
favor. His feeling of utter distaste reacted upon me, 
and I was sensible of the same weary lack of appre- 
ciation that used to chill me through, in my earlier 
visits to picture-galleries ; the same doubt, moreover, 
w^hether we do not bamboozle ourselves in the greater 
part of the admiration which we learn to bestow. I 
looked with some pleasure at one of Correggio's Ma- 
donnas in the Tribune, — no divine and deep-thoughted 
mother of the Saviour, but a young woman playing 
with her first child, as gay and thoughtless as itself. 
I looked at Michael Angelo's Madonna, in which 
William Ware saw such prophetic depth of feeling; 
but I suspect it was one of the many instances in 
which the spectator sees more than the painter ever 
dreamed of. 

Straying through the city, after leaving the gallery, 
we went into the Church of Or San Michele, and saw 
in its architecture the traces of its transformation 
from a market into a church. In its pristine state it 
consisted of a double row of three great open arches, 
with the wind blowing through them, and the sun' 
shine falling aslantwise into them, while the bustle 
of the market, the sale of fish, flesh, or fruit went on 
within, or brimmed over into the streets that enclosed 
them on every side. But, four or five hundred years 
ago, the broad arches were built up with stone-work ; 
windows were pierced through and filled with painted 
glass ; a high altar, in a rich style of pointed Gothic, 



1858.] ITALY. 71 

was raised ; shrines and confessionals were set up ; 
and here it is, a solemn and antique church, where a 
man may buy his salvation instead of his dinner. 
At any rate, the Catholic priests will insure it to him, 
and take the price. The sculpture within the beauti- 
fully decorated niches, on the outside of the church, is 
very curious and interesting. The statues of those old 
saints seem to have that charm of earnestness which 
so attracts the admirers of the Pre-Raphaelite painters. 

It appears that a picture of the Virgin used to hang 
against one of the pillars of the market-place while it 
was still a market, and in the year 1291 several mir- 
acles were wrought by it, insomuch that a chapel was 
consecrated for it. So many worshippers came to the 
shrine that the business of the market was impeded, 
and ultimately the Virgin and St. Michael won the 
whole space for themselves. The upper part of the 
edifice was at that time a granary, and is still used 
for other than religious purposes. This church was 
one spot to which the inhabitants betook themselves 
much for refuge and divine assistance during the 
great plague described by Boccaccio. 

Jidy 2d. — We set out yesterday morning to visit 
the Palazzo Buonarotti, Michael Angelo's ancestral 
home It is in the Via Ghibellina, an ordinary- 
looking, three-story house, with broad-brimmed eaves, 
a stuccoed front, and two or three windows painted in 
fresco, besides the real ones. Adown the street, there 
is a glimpse of the hills outside of Florence. The sun 
shining heavily directly upon the front, we rang the 
door-bell, and then drew back into the shadow that 



72 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

fell from the opposite side of the street. After we 
had waited some time a man looked out from an 
tipper window, and a woman from a lower one, and 
informed us thut we could not be admitted now, nor 
for two or three months to come, the house being 
under repairs. It is a pity, for I wished to see 
Michael Angelo's sword and walking-stick and old slip- 
pers, and whatever other of his closest personalities 

are to be shown 

We passed into the Piazza of the Grand Duke, and 
looked into the court of the Paiazzo Vecchio, with its 
beautifully embossed pillars ; and, seeing just beyond 
the court a staircase of broad and easy steps, we 
ascended it at a venture. Upward and upward we 
went, flight after flight of stairs, and through passages, 
till at last we found an official who ushered us into 
a large saloon. It was the Hall of Audience. Its 
heavily embossed ceiling, rich with tarnished gold, 
was a feature of antique magnificence, and the only 
one that it retained, the floor being paved with tiles 
and the furniture scanty or none. There were, how- 
ever, three cabinets standing against the walls, two of 
which contained very curious and exquisite carvings 
and cuttings in ivory ; some of them in the Chinese 
style of hollow, concentric balls ; others, really beauti- 
ful works of art : little crucifixes, statues, saintly and 
knightly, and cups enriched with delicate bas-reliefs: 
The custode pointed to a small figure of St. Sebastian, 
and also to a vase around which the reliefs seemed to 
assume life. Both these specimens, he said, were by 
Benvenuto Cellini, and there were many others that 



1858.] ITALY. 73 

might well have been wrought by his famous hand. 
The third cabinet contained a great number and 
variety of crucifixes, chalices, and whatever other 
vessels are needed in altar service, exquisitely carved 
out of amber. They belong to the chapel of the j^al- 
ace, and into this holy closet we were now conducted. 
It is large enough to accommodate comfortably 
perhaps thirty worshippers, and is quite covered with 
frescos by Ghirlandaio in good preservation, and with 
remnants enough of gilding and bright color to show 
how splendid the chapel must have been when the 
Medicean Grand Dukes used to pray here. The altar 
is still ready for service, and I am not sure that some 
of the wax tapers were not burning ; but Lorenzo the 
Magnificent was nowhere to be seen. 

The custode now led us back through the Hall of 
Audience into a smaller room, hung with pictures 
chiefly of the Medici and their connections, among 
whom was one Carolina, an intelligent and pretty 
child, and Bianca Capella. 

There was nothing else to show us except a very 
noble and most spacious saloon, lighted by two large 
windows at each end, coming down level with the 
floor, and by a row of windows on one side just 
beneath the cornice. A gilded framework divides the 
ceiling into squares, circles, and octagons, the com- 
partments of which are filled with pictures in oil ; and 
the walls are covered with immense frescos, represent- 
ing various battles and triumphs of the Florentines. 
Statues by Michael Angelo, John of Bologna, and Ban- 
dinello, as well historic as ideal, stand round the hall. 



74 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858, 

and it is really a fit theatre for the historic scenes of 
a country to be acted in. It was built, moreover, 
with the idea of its being the council-hall of a free 
people ; but our own little Faneuil, which was meant, 
in all simplicity, to be merely a spot where the towns- 
people should meet to choose their selectmen, has 
served the world better in that respect. I wish I had 
more room to speak of this vast, dusky, historic hall. 
[This volume of journal closes here.] 

July ith, 1858. — Yesterday forenoon we went to 
see the Church of Santa Maria Novella. We found 
the piazza, on one side of which the church stands, 
encumbered with the amphitheatrical ranges of 
wooden seats that had been erected to accommodate 
the spectators of the chariot-races, at the recent Feast 
of St. John. The front of the church is composed of 
black and white marble, which, in the course of the 
five centuries that it has been built, has turned brown 
and yellow. On the right hand, as you approach, is 
a long colonnade of arches, extending on a line with 
the faqade, and having a tomb beneath every arch. 
This colonnade forms one of the Enclosing walls of a 
cloister. We found none of the front entrances open, 
but on our left, in a wall at right angles with the 
church, there was an open gateway, approaching 
which, we saw, within the four-sided colonnade, an 
enclosed green space of a cloister. This is what is 
called the Chiostro Yerde, so named from the pre- 
vailing color of the frescos with which the walls 
beneath the arches are adorned. 

This cloister is the reality of what I used to imagine 



1858.J ITALY. 75 

when I saw the half-ruinous colonnades connected 
with English cathedrals, or endeavored to trace out 
the lines along the broken wall of some old abbey. 
Not that this extant cloister, still perfect and in daily 
use_for its original purposes, is nearly so beautiful as 
the crumbling ruin which has ceased to be trodden 
by monkish feet for more than three centuries. The 
cloister of Santa Maria has not the seclusion that is 
desirable, being open, by its gateway, to the public 
square; and several of the neighbors, women as well 
as men, were loitering within its precincts. The 
convent, however, has another and larger cloister, 
which I suppose is kept free from interlopers. The 
Chiostro Yerde is a walk round the four sides of a 
square, beneath an arched and groined roof One 
side of the walk looks upon an enclosed green space 
with a fountain or a tomb (I forget which) in the 
centre; the other side is ornamented all afcng with 
a succession of ancient frescos, representing subjects 
of Scripture history. In the days when the designs 
were more distinct than now, it must have been a 
very effective way for a monk to read Bible history, 
to see its personages and events thus passing visibly 
beside him in his morning and evening walks. Be- 
neath the frescos on one side of the cloistered walk, 
and along the low stone parapet that separates it 
from the grass-plat on the other, are inscriptions to 
the memory of the dead who are buried underneath 
the pavement. The most of these were modem, and 
recorded the names of persons of no particular note. 
Other monumental slabs were inlaid with the pave- 



76 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

ment itself. Two or three Dominican monks, belong- 
ing to the convent, passed in and out while we were 
there in their white habits. 

After going round three sides, we came to the 
fourth, formed by the w^all of the church, and heard 
the voice of a priest behind a curtain that fell down 
before a door. Lifting it aside, we went in, and found 
ourselves in the ancient chapter-house, a large in- 
terior formed by two great pointed arches crossing 
one another in a groined roof. The broad spaces of 
the walls were entirely covered with frescos that are 
rich even now, and must have glowed with an inex- 
pressible splendor, when fresh from the artists' hands, 
five hundred years ago. There is a long period, 
during which frescos illuminate a church or a hall in 
a way that no other adornment can ; when this epoch 
of brightness is past, they become the dreariest ghosts 

of perished magnificence This chapter-house is 

the only part of the church that is now used for the 
purposes of public worship. There are several con- 
fessionals, and two chapels or shrines, each with its 
lighted tapers. A priest performed mass while we 
were there, and several persons, as usual, stepped in 
to do a little devotion, either praying on their own 
accovmt, or uniting with the ceremony that was going 
forward. One man was followed by two little dogs, 
and in the midst of his prayers, as one of the dogs 
was inclined to stray about the church, he kept 
snapping his fingers to call him back. The cool, 
dusky refreshment of these holy places, affording such 
a refuge from the hot noon of the streets and piazzas. 



1858.] ITALY. 77 

probably suggests devotional ideas to the people, and 
it may be, when they are praying, they feel a breath 
of Paradise fanning them. If we could only gee any 
good effects in their daily life, we might deem it an 
excellent thing to be able to find incense and a prayer 
always ascending, to which every individual may join 
his own. I really wonder that the Catholics are not 
better men and women. 

Yv hen we had looked at the old frescos, .... we 
emerged into the cloister again, and thence ventured 
into a passage which would have led us to the Chiostro 
Grande, where strangers, and especially ladies, have 
no right to go. It was a secluded corridor, very 
neatly kept, bordered with sepulchral monuments, 
and at the end appeared a vista of cypress-trees, 
wdiich indeed w^ere but an illusory perspective, being 
painted in fresco. AVhile we loitered along .... the 
sacristan appeared and offered to show us the church, 
and led us into the transept on the right of the high 
altar, and ushered us into the sacristy, where we. 
found two artists copying some of Fra Angelico's 
pictures. These were painted on the three wooden 
leaves of a tryptich, and, as usual, were glorified with 
a great deal of gilding, so that they seemed to float 
in the brightness of a heavenly element. Solomon 
speaks of " apples of gold in pictures of silver." The 
pictures of Fra Angelico, and other artists of that 
age, are really pictures of gold ; and it is wonderful 
to see how rich the effect, and how much delicate 
beauty is attained (by Fra Angelico at least) along 
with it. His miniature-heads appear to me much 



78 FRENCH AXD ITALIAN KOTE-BOOKS. [lS58. 

more successful than his larger ones. In a monkish 
point of view, however, the chief value of the tryptich 
of which I am speaking does not lie in the pictures, 
for they merely serve as the framework of some 
relics, which are set all round the edges of the 
three leaves. They consist of little bits and fragments 
of bones, and of packages carefully tied up in silk, 
the contents of which are signified in Gothic letters 
appended to each parcel. The sacred vessels of the 
church are likewise kept in the sacristy 

Re-entering the transept, our guide showed us the 
chapel of the Strozzi family, which is accessible by a 
flight of steps from the floor of the church. The 
walls of this chapel are covered with frescos by Or- 
gagna, representing around the altar the Last Judg- 
ment, and on one of the walls heaven and the assem- 
bly of the blessed, and on the other, of course, hell. 
I cannot speak as to the truth of the representation ; 
but, at all events, it was purgatory to look at 
it 

We next passed into the choir, which occupies the 
extreme end of the church behind the great square 
mass of the high altar, and is surrounded with a 
double row of ancient oaken seats of venerable shape 
and carving. The choir is illuminated by a threefold 
Gothic window, full of richly painted glass, worth all 
the frescos that ever stained a wall or ceiling; but 
these walls, nevertheless, are adorned with frescos by 
Ghirlandaio, and it is easy to see must once have 
made a magnificent appearance, I really w^as sen- 
sible of a sad and ghostly beauty in many of the 



1858] ITALY. 79 

figures ; but all the bloom, the magic of the painter's 
touch, his topmost art, have long ago been rubbed off, 
the white plaster showing through the colors in spots, 
and even in large spaces. Any other sort of ruin 
acquires a beauty proper to its decay, and often supe- 
rior to that of its pristine state ; but the ruin of a 
picture, especially of a fresco, is wholly unredeemed ; 
and, moreover, it dies so slowly that many genera- 
tions are likely to be saddened by it. 

We next saw the famous picture of the Virgin by 
Cimabue, which was deemed a miracle in its day, 
.... and still brightens the sombre walls with the 
lustre of its gold ground. As to its artistic merits, it 
seems to me that the babe Jesus has a certain air of 
state and dignity ; but I could see no charm whatever 
in the broad-faced Virgin, and it would relieve my 
mind and rejoice my spirit if the picture were borne 
out of the church in another triumphal procession 
(like the one which brought it there), and reverently 
burnt. This should be the final honor paid to all 
human works that have served a good office in their 
day, for when their day is over, if still galvanized into 

false life, they do harm instead of good The 

interior of Santa Maria Novella is spacious and in the 
Gothic style, though differing from English churches 
of that order of architecture. It is not now kept open 
to the public, nor were any of the shrines and chapels, 
nor even the high altar itself, adorned and lighted for 
worship. The pictures that decorated the shrines 
along the side-aisles have been removed, leaving bare, 
blank spaces of brickwork, very dreary and desolate 



80 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

to behold. This is almost worse than a black oil- 
painting or a faded fresco. The church was much 
injured by the French, and afterwards by the Austri- 
ans, both powers having quartered their troops within 
the holy precincts. Its old walls, however, are yet 
stalwart enough to outlast another set of frescos, and 
to see the beginning and the end of a new school of 
painting as long-lived as Cimabue's. I should be 
sorry to have the church go to decay, because it was 
here that Boccaccio's dames and cavaliers encountered 
one another, and formed their plan of retreating into 
the country during the plague 

At the door we bought a string of beads, with a 
small crucifix appended, in memory of the place. 
The beads seem to be of a grayish, pear-shaped seed, 
and the seller assured us that they were the tears of 
St. Job. They were cheap, probably because Job shed 
so many tears in his lifetime. 

It being still early in the day, we went to the 
Ujfiizzi galler}^, and after loitering a good while among 
the pictures, v/ere so fortunate as to find the room of 
the bronzes open. The first object that attracted us 
was John of Bologna's Mercury, poising himself on 
tiptoe, and looking not merely buoyant enough to 
float, but as if he possessed more than the eagle's 
power of lofty flight. It seems a wonder that he did 
not absolutely fling himself into the air when the 
artist gave him the last touch. No bolder work was 
ever achieved ; nothing so full of life has been done 
since. I was much interested, too, in the original 
little wax model, two feet high, of Benvenuto Cellini's 



1858.] ITALY. 81 

Perseus. The wax seems to be laid over a wooden 
framework, and is but roughly finished off. ... . 

In an adjoining room are innumerable specimens of 
Roman and Etruscan bronzes, great and small. A 
bronze Chimera did not strike me as very ingeniously 
conceived, the goat's head being merely an adjunct, 
growing out of the back of the monster, without pos- 
sessing any original and substantive share in its nature. 
The snake's head is at the end of the tail. The object 
most really interesting was a Roman eagle, the stand- 
ard of the Twenty-fourth Legion, about the size of a 
blackbird. 

July Sth. — On the 6th we went to the Church of 
the Annunziata, which stands in the piazza of the 
same name. On the corner of the Via dei Servi is the 
palace which I suppose to be the one that Browning 
makes the scene of his poem, " The Statue and the 
Bust," and the statue of Duke Ferdinand sits stately 
on horseback, with his face turned towards the win- 
dow, where the lady ought to appear. Neither she 
nor the bust, however, was visible, at least not to my 
eyes. The church occupies one side of the piazza, 
and in front of it, as likewise on the two adjoining 
sides of the square, there are pillared arcades, con- 
structed by Brunelleschi or his scholars. After pass- 
ing through these arches, and still before entering the 
church itself, you come to an ancient cloister, which 
is now quite enclosed in glass as a means of preserv- 
ing some frescos of Andrea del Sarto and others, 
which are considered valuable. 

Passing the threshold of the church, we were quite 



8:2 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

dazzled by the splendor that shone upon us from th-e 
ceilmg of the nave, tho great parallelogTams of which, 
viewed from one end, look as if richly embossed all 
over with gold. The whole interior, indeed, has an 
effect of brightness and magnificence, the walls being 
covered mostly with light-colored marble, into which 
are inlaid compartments of rarer and richer marbles. 
The pillars and pilasters, too, are of variegated mar- 
bles, with Corinthian capitals, that shine just as brightly 
as if they were of solid gold, so faithfully have they 
been gilded and burnished. The pavement is formed of 
squares of black and white marble. There are no side- 
aisles, but ranges of chapels, with communication from 
one to another, stand round the whole extent of the 
nave and choir ; all of marble, all decorated with pic- 
tures, statues, busts, and mural monuments; all 
worth, separately, a day's inspection. The" high altar 
is of great beauty and richness, .... and also the 
tomb of John of Bologna in a chapel at the remotest 
extremity of the church. In this chapel there are 
some bas-reliefs by him, and also a large crucifix, with 
a marble Christ upon it. I think there has been no 

better sculptor since the days of Phidias 

The church was founded by seven gentlemen of 
f'lorence, who formed themselves into a religious order 
called "Servants of Mary." Many miraculous cures 
were wrought here ; and the church, in consequence, 
was so thickly hung with votive offerings of legs, 
arms, and other things in wax, that they used to 
tumble upon people's heads, so that finally they were 
all cleared out as rubbish. The church is still, I 



i858.] ITALY. 83 

should imagine, looked upon as a place of peculiar sanc- 
tity j for while we were there it had an unusual number 
of kneeling worshippers, and persons were passing from 
shrine to shrine all round the nave and choir, praying 
awhile at each, and thus performing a pilgrimage at 
little cost of time and labor. One old gentleman, I 
observed, carried a cushion or pad, just big enough for 
one knee, on which he carefully adjusted his genu- 
flexions before each altar. An old woman in the choir 
prayed alternately to us and to the saints, with most 
success, I hope, in her petitions to the latter, though 
certainly her prayers to ourselves seemed the more 
fervent of the two. 

When we had gone entirely round the church, we 
came at last to the chapel of the Annunziata, which 
stands on the floor of the nave, on the left hand as 
we enter. It is a very beautiful piece of architecture, 
— a sort of canopy of marble, supported upon pillars ; 
and its magnificence within, in marble and silver, and 
all manner of holy decoration, is quite indescribable. 
Tt was built four hundred years ago, by Pietro di 
Medici, and has probably been growing richer ever 
since. The altar is entirely of silver, richly embossed. 
As many people were kneeling on the steps before it 
as could find room, and most of them, when they fin- 
ished their prayers, ascended the steps, kissed over 
and over again the margin of the silver altar, laid 
their foreheads upon it, and then deposited an offer- 
ing in a box placed upon the altar's top. From the 
dulness of the chink in the only case when I heard it, 
I judged it to be a small copper coin. 



84. FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

In the inner part of this chapel is preserved a mirac- 
ulous picture of the "Santissima Annunziata," painted 
by angels, and held in such holy repute that forty 
thousand dollars have lately been expended in provid- 
ing a new crown for the sacred personage represented. 
The picture is now veiled behind a curtain ; and as it 
is a fresco, and is not considered to do much credit to 
the angelic artists, I was well contented not to see it. 

We found a side door of the church admitting us 
into the great cloister, which has a walk of intersecting 
arches round its four sides, paved with flat tomb- 
stones, and broad enough for six people to walk 
abreast. On the walls, in the semicircles of each 
successive arch, are frescos representing incidents in 
the lives of the seven founders of the church, and all 
the lower part of the wall is incrusted with marble 
inscriptions to the memory of the dead, and mostly of 
persons who have died not very long ago. The space 
enclosed by the cloistered walk, usually made cheerful 
by green grass, has a pavement of tombstones laid in 
regular ranges. In the centre is a stone octagonal 
structure, which at first I supposed to be the tomb of 
some deceased mediaeval personage ; but, on approach- 
ing, I found it a well, with its bucket hanging within 
the curb, and looking as if it were in constant use. 
The surftice of the water lay deep beneath the deepest 
dust of the dead people, and thence threw up its picture 
of the sky ; but I think it would not be a moderate 
thirst that would induce me to drink of that well. 

On leaving the church we bought a little gilt cru- 
cifix 



1853.] ITALY. 85 

On Sunday evening I paid a short visit to Mr. 
Powers, and, as usual, was entertained and instructed 
with his conversation. It did not, indeed, turn upoii 
artistical subjects ; but the artistic is only one side of 
his character, and, I think, not the principal side. 
He might have achieved valuable success as an en- 
gineer and mechanician. He gave a dissertation on fly- 
ing-machines, evidently from his own experience, and 
came to the conclusion that it is impossible to fly by 
means of steam or any other motive power now known 
to man. No force hitherto attained would suflice to 
lift the engine which generated it. He appeared to 
anticipate that flying will be a future mode of locomo- 
tion, but not till the moral condition of mankind is- so 
improved as to obviate the bad uses to which the 
power might be applied. Another topic discussed was 
a cure for complaints of the chest by the inhalation of 
nitric acid ; and he produced his own apparatus for 
that purpose, being merely a tube inserted into a 
bottle containing a small quantity of the acid, just 
enough to produce the gas for inhalation. He told 
me, too, a remedy for burns accidentally discovered by 
himself; viz., to wear wash-leather, or something equiv- 
alent, over the burn, and keep it constantly wet. It 
prevents all pain, and cures by the exclusion of the 
air. He evidently has a great tendency to empirical 
remedies, and would have made a natural doctor of 
mighty potency, possessing the shrewd sense, inventive 
faculty, and self-reliance that such persons require. It 
is very singular that there should be an ideal vein in 
a man of this character. 



86 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

This morning he called to see me, with intelligence of 
the failure of the new attempt to lay the electric cable 
between England and America; and here, too, it 
appears the misfortune might have been avoided if a 
plan of his own for laying the cable had been adopted. 
He explained his process, and made it seem as practi- 
cable as to put up a bell-wire. I do not remember 
how or why (but appositely) he repeated some verses, 
from a pretty little ballad about fairies, that had 
struck his fancy, and he wound up his talk with some 
acute observations on the characters of General Jack- 
son and other public men. He told an anecdote, 
illustrating the old general's small acquaintance with 
astronomical science, and his force of will in compel- 
ling a whole dinner-party of better instructed people 
than himself to succumb to him in an argument about 
eclipses and the planetary system generally. Powers 
witnessed the scene himself He thinks that General 
Jackson was a man of the keenest and surest intuitions, 
in respect to men and measures, but with no power of 
reasoning out his own conclusions, or of imparting 
them intellectually to other persons. Men who have 
known Jackson intimately, and in great affairs, would 
not agree as to this intellectual and argumentative 
deficiency, though they would fully allow the intuitive 
faculty. I have heard General Pierce tell a striking 
instance of Jackson's power of presenting his own view 
of a subject with irresistible force to the mind of the 
auditor. President Buchanan has likewise expressed 
to me as high admiration"*" of Jackson as I ever heard 
one man award to another. Surely he was a great 



1858.] ITALY. 87 

man, and his native strength, «as well of intellect as 
character, compelled every man to be his tool that 
came within his reach ; and the more cunning the 
individual might be, it served only to make him the 
sharper tool. 

Speaking of Jackson, ►and remembering Raphael's 
picture of Pope Julius IL, the best portrait in the 
whole world, and excellent in all its repetitions, I 
wish it had been possible for Raphael to paint General 
Jackson ! 

Referring again to General Jackson's intuitions, 
and to Powers's idea that he was unable to render s. 
reason to himself or others for what he chose to do, I 
should have thought that this very probably might 
have been the case, were there not such strong evi- 
dence to the contrary. The highest, or perhaps any 
high administrative ability is intuitive, and precedes 
argument, and rises above it. It is a revelation of 
the very thing to be done, and its propriety and 
necessity are felt so strobgly that very likely it can- 
not be tdlked about ; if the doer can likewise talk, it 
is an additional and gratuitous faculty, as little to be 
expected as that a poet should be able to write an 
■explanatory criticism on his own poem. The English 
overlook this in their scheme of government, which 
requires that the members of the national executive 
should be orators, and the readiest and most fluent 
orators that can be found. The very fact (on which 
they are selected) that they are men of words makes 
_it improbable that they are likewise men of deeds. 
And it is only tradition and old custom, founded on 



88 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

an obsolete state of things, that assigns any value to 
parliamentary oratory. The world has done with it, 
except as an intellectual pastime. The speeches have 
no effect till they are converted into newspaper para- 
graphs ; and they had better be composed as such, 
in the first place, and oratory reserved for churches, 
courts of law, and public dinner-tables. 

July 10th. — My wife and I went yesterday fore- 
noon to see the Church of San Marco, with which is 
connected a convent of Dominicans The inte- 
rior is not less than three or four hundred years old, 
and is in the classic style, with a flat ceiling, gilded, 
and a lofty arch, supported by pillars, between the 
nave and choir. There are no side-aisles, but ranges 
of shrines on both sides of the nave, each beneath its 
own pair of pillars and pediments. The pavement is 
of brick, with here and there a marble tombstone 
inlaid. It is not a magnificent church ; but looks 
dingy with time and apparent neglect, though ren- 
dered sufficiently interesting by statues of mediaeval 
date by John of Bologna and other old sculptors, and 
by monumental busts and bas-reliefs : also, there is a 
wooden crucifix by Giotto, with ancient gilding on 
it ; and a painting of Christ, which was considered a 
wonderful work in its day. Each shrine, or most of 
them, at any rate, had its dark old picture, and there 
is a very old and hideous mosaic of the Virgin and 
two saints, which I looked at very slightly, with the 
purpose of immediately forgetting it. Savonarola, the 
reforming monk, was a brother of this convent, and 
was torn from its shelter, to be subsequently hanged 



1858.] ITALY. 89 

and burnt in the Grand Dncal Piazza. A large chapel 
in the left transept is of the Salviati family, dedicated 
to St. Anthony, and decorated with several statues 
of saints, and with some old frescos. When we had 
more than sufticiently examined these, the custode 
proposed to show us some frescos of Fra Angelico, and 
conducted us into a large cloister, under the arches 
of which, and beneath a covering of glass, he pointed 
to a picture of St. Dominic kneeling at the Cross. 
There are two or three others by the angelic friar in 
different . parts of the cloister, and a regular series, 
filling up all the arches, by various artists. Its four- 
sided, cloistered walk surrounds a square, open to the 
sky as usual, and paved with gray stones that have no 
inscriptions, but probably are laid over graves. Its 
walls, however, are incrusted, and the walk itself is 
paved with monumental inscriptions on marble, none 
of which, so far as I observed, were of ancient date. 
Either the fashion of thus commemorating the dead 
is not ancient in Florence, or the old tombstones have 
been removed to make room for new ones. I do not 
know where the monks themselves have their burial- 
place ; perhaps in an inner cloister, which we did not 
see. All the inscriptions here, I believe, were in 
memory of persons not connected with the convent. 
A door in the wall of the cloister admitted us into 
the chapter-house, its interior moderately spacious, 
with a roof formed by intersecting arches. Three 
$ides of the walls were covered with blessed white- 
wash ; but on the fourth side, opposite to the en- 
trance, was a great fresco of the Crucifixion, by Fra 



90 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

Angelico, surrounded with a border or pictured frame- 
work, in which are represented the heads of saints, 
prophets, and sibyls, as large as life. The cross of 
the Saviour and those of the thieves were painted 
against a dark red sky ; the figures upon them were 
lean and attenuated, evidently the vague conceptions 
of a man who had never seen a naked figure. Be- 
neath, was a multitude of people, most of whom were 
saints who had lived and been martyred long after 
the Crucifixion ; and some of these had wounds 
from which gilded rays shone forth, as if the inner 
glory and blessedness of the holy men blazed through 
them. It is a very ugly picture, and its ugliness is 
not that of strength and vigor, but of weakness and 
incompetency. Fra Angelico should have confined 
himself to miniature heads, in which his delicacy of 
touch and minute labor often produce an excellent 
effect. The custode informed us that there were 
more frescos of this pious artist in the interior of the 
convent, into which I might be allowed admittance, 
but not my wife. I declined seeing them, and heartily 
thanked heaven for my escape. 

Returning through the church, we stopped to look 
at a shrine on the right of the entrance, where several 
wax candles were lighted, and the steps of which were 
crowded with worshippers. It was evidently a spot 
of special sanctity, and, approaching the steps, we 
saw, behind a gilded framework of stars and pro- 
tected by glass, a wooden image of the Saviour^ naked, 
covered with spots of blood, crowned with thorns, 
and expressing all the human wretchedness that the 



1858.] ITALY. 91 

carver's skill could represent. The whole shrine^ 
within the glass, was hung with offerings, as well of 
silver and gold as of tinsel and trumpery, and the 
body of Christ glistened with gold chains and orna- 
ments, and with watches of silver and gold, some of 
which appeared to be of very old manufacture, and 
others might be new. Amid all this glitter the face 
of pain and grief looked forth, not a whit comforted. 
While we stood there, a woman, who had been pray- 
ing, arose from her knees and laid an offering of a 
single flower upon the shrine. 

The corresponding arch, on the opposite side of the 
entrance, contained a wax-work within a large glass 
case, representing the Nativity. I do not remember 
how the Blessed Infant looked, but the Virgin was 
gorgeously dressed in silks, satins, and gauzes, with 
spangles and ornaments of all kinds, and I believe 
brooches of real diamonds on her bosom. Her attire, 
judging from its freshness and newness of glitter, 
might have been put on that very morning. 

July \Wi. — We went for the second time, this 
morning, to the Academy of Fine Arts, and I looked 
pretty thoroughly at the Pre-Raphaelite pictures, few 
of which are really worth looking at nowadays. Cima- 
bue and Giotto might certainly be dismissed, hence- 
forth and forever, without any detriment to the cause 
of good art. There is what seems to me a better 
picture than either of these has produced, by Bona- 
mico Buffalmacco, an artist of about their date or 
not long after. The first real picture in the series is 
the " Adoration of the Magi," by Gentile da Fabriano, 



92 ■ FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

a really splendid work in all senses, with noble and 
beautiful figures in it, and a crowd of personages, 
managed with great skill. Three pictures by Perugino 
are the only other ones I cared to look at. In one of 
these, the face of the Virgin who holds the dead Christ 
on her knees has a deeper expression of woe than can 
ever have been painted since. After Perugino the 
pictures cease to be interesting ; the art came forward 
with rapid strides, but the painters and their pro- 
ductions do not take nearly so much hold of the 
spectator as before. They all paint better than Giotto 
and Cimabue, — in some respects better than Peru- 
gino ; but they paint in vain, probably because they 
were not nearly so much in earnest, and meant far 
less, though possessing the dexterity to express far 
more. Andrea del Sarto appears to have been a 
good painter, yet I always turn away readily from his 
pictures. I looked again, and for a good while, at 
Carlo Dolce's portrait of the Eternal Father, for it 
is a miracle and masterpiece of absurdity, and almost 
equally a miracle of pictorial art. It is the All- 
powerless, a fair-haired, soft, consumptive deity, with 
a mouth that h^s fallen open through very weakness. 
He holds one hand on his stomach, as if the wicked- 
ness and wretchedness of mankind made him qualm- 
ish ; and he is looking down out of Heaven with an 
expression of pitiable appeal, or as if seeking some- 
where for assistance in his heavy task of ruling the 
universe. You might fancy such a being falling on 
his knees before a strong-willed man, and beseeching 
him to take the reins of omnipotence out of his hands. 



.1858.] ITALY. 93 

No wonder that wrong gets the better of right, and 
that good and ill are confounded, if the Supremo 
Head were as here depicted ; for I never saw, and 
nobody else ever saw, so perfect a representation of 
a person burdened with a task infinitely above his 
strength. If Carlo Dolce had been wicked enough to 
know what he was doing, the picture would have been 
most blasphemous, — a satire, in the very person of 
the Almighty, against all incompetent rulers, and 
against the rickety machine and crazy action of the 
universe. Heaven forgive me for such thoughts as 
this picture has suggested ! It must be added that 
the great original defect in the character as here 
represented is an easy good-nature. I wonder what 
Michael Angelo would have said to this painting. 

In the large, enclosed court connected with the 
Academy there are a number of statues, bas-reliefs, 
and casts, and what was especially interesting, the 
vague and rude commencement of a statue of St. 
Matthew by Michael Angelo. The conceptions of this 
great sculptor were so godlike that he seems to have 
been discontented at not likewise possessing the god- 
like attribute of creating and embodying them with 
an instantaneous thought, and therefore we often find 
sculptures from his hand left at the critical point of 
their struggle to get out of the marble. The statue 
of St. Matthew looks like the antediluvian fossil of 
a human being of an epoch when humanity was 
mightier and more majestic than now, long ago im- 
prisoned in stone, and half uncovered again. 

July 1 ^th. — We went yesterday forenoon to see the 



^i FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

Bargello. I do not know anything more picturesque 
in Florence than the great interior court of this an- 
cient Palace of the Podesta, with the lofty height of 
the edifice looking down into the enclosed space, dark 
and stern, and the armorial bearings of a long succes- 
sion of magistrates carved in stone upon the walls, a 
garland, as it were, of these Gothic devices extending 
quite round the court. The best feature of the whole 
is the broad stone staircase, with its heavy balustrade, 
ascending externally from the court to the iron-grated 
door in the second story. We passed the sentinels 
under the lofty archway that communicates with the 
street, and went up the stairs without being ques- 
tioned or impeded. At the iron-grated door, however, 
we were met by two officials in uniform, who cour- 
teously informed us that there was nothing to be ex- 
hibited in the Bargello except an old chapel contain- 
ing some frescos by Giotto, and that these could only 
be seen by making a previous appointment with the 
custode, he not being constantly on hand. I was not 
sorry to escape the frescos, though one of them is a 
portrait of Dante. 

We next went to the Church of the Badia, which is 
built in the form of a Greek cross, with a flat roof 
embossed and once splendid with now tarnished gold. 
The pavement is of brick, and the walls of dark stone, 
similar to that of the interior of the Cathedral (pietra 
Serena), and there being, according to Florentine cus- 
tom, but little light, the eifect was sombre, though 
the cool gloomy dusk was refreshing after the hot tur- 
moil and dazzle of the adjacent street. Here we found 



1858.] ITALY. 95 

three or four Gothic tombs, with figures of the de- 
ceased persons stretched in marble slumber upon 
them. There were likewise a picture or two, which it 
was impossible to see ; indeed, I have hardly ever met 
with a picture in a church that was not utterly wasted 
and thrown away in the deep shadows of the chapel it 
was meant to adorn. If there is the remotest chance 
of its being seen, the sacristan hangs a curtain before 
it for the sake of his fee for withdrawing it. In the 
chapel of the Bianco family we saw (if it could be 
called seeing) what is considered the finest oil-painting 
of Fra Filippo Lippi. It was evidently hung with 
reference to a lofty window on the other side of the 
church, whence sufficient light might fall upon it to 
show a picture so vividly painted as this is, and as 
most of Fra Filippo Lippi's are. The window was 
curtained, however, and the chapel so dusky that I 
could make out nothing. 

Several persons came in to say their prayers during 
the little time that we remained in the church, and 
as we came out we passed a good woman who sat 
knitting in the coolness of the vestibule, which was 
lined with mural tombstones. Probably she spends 
the day thus, keeping up the little industry of her 
fingers, slipping into the church to pray whenever a 
devotional impulse swells into her heart, and asking 
an alms as often as she sees a person of charitable 
aspect. 

From the church we went to the Uffizzi gallery, 
and reinspected the greater part of it pretty faithfully. 
We had the good fortune, too, again to get admittance 



96 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

into the cabinet of bronzes, where we admired anew 
the wonderful airiness of John of Bologna's Mercury, 
which, as I now observed, rests on nothing substan- 
tial, but on the breath of a zephyr beneath him. We 
also saw a bronze bust of one of the Medici by Ben- 
venuto Cellini, and a thousand other things the curi- 
osity of which is overlaid by their multitude. The 
Roman eagle, which I have recorded to be about the 
size of a blackbird, I now saw to be as large as a 
pigeon. 

On our way towards the door of the gallery, at our 
departure, we saw the cabinet of gems open, and again 
feasted our eyes with its concentrated brilliancies and 
magnificences. Among them were two crystal cups,' 
with engraved devices, and covers of enamelled gold, 
wrought by Benvenuto Cellini, and wonderfully beau- 
tiful. But it is idle to mention one or two things, 
when all are so beautiful and curious ; idle, too, be- 
cause language is not burnished gold, with here and 
there a brighter word flashing like a diamond ; and 
therefore no amount of talk will give the slightest idea 
of one of these elaborate handiworks. 

July ^Itli. — I seldom go out nowadaj^s, having 
already seen Florence tolerably well, and the streets 
being very hot, and myself having been engaged in 
sketching out a romance,'^ which whether it will 
ever come to anything is a point yet to be decided. 
At any rate, it leaves me little heart for journalizing 
and describing new things ; and six months of unin- 
terrupted monoton}" would be more valuable to me 

* The Marble Faun. — Ed. 



XS5S.] ITALY. 97 

just now, than the most brilliant succession of novel- 
ties. 

Yesterday I spent a good deal of time in watching 
the setting out of a wedding party from our door ; the 
bride being the daughter of an English lady, the 

Countess of . After all, there was nothing very 

characteristic. The bridegroom is a young man of 

English birth, son of the Countess of St. G , who 

inhabits the third piano of this Casa del Bello. The 
very curious part of the spectacle was the swarm of 
beggars who haunted the street all day ; the most 
wretched mob conceivable, chiefly women, with a few 
blind people, and some old men and boys. Among 
these the bridal party distributed their beneficence in 
the shape of some handfals of copper, with here and 
there a half-paul intermixed ; whereupon the whole 
wretched mob flung themselves in a heap upon the 
pavement, struggling, fighting, tumbling one over an- 
other, and then looking up to the windows with petition- 
ary gestures for more and more, and still for more. 
Doubtless, they had need enough, for they looked 
thin, sickly, ill-fed, and the women ugly to the last 
degree. The wedding party had a breakfast above 
stairs, which lasted till four o'clock, and the'n the 
bridegroom took his bride in a barouche and pair, 
which was already crammed with his own luggage and 
hers. . . . . He was a well-looking young man enough, 
in a uniform of French gray with silver epaulets ; 
more agreeable in aspect than his bride, who, I think, 
will have the upper hand in their domestic hfe. I 
observed that, on getting into the barouche, he sat 
VOL. II. 5 a 



98 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

down on her dress, as he could not well help doing, 
and received a slight reprimand in consequence. After 
their departure, the wedding guests took their leave ; 
the most noteworthy person being the Pope's Nuncio 
(the young man being son of the Pope's Chamberlain, 
and one of the Grand Duke's Noble Guard), an ecclesi- 
astical personage in purple stockings, attended by two 
priests, all of whom got into a coach, the driver and 
footmen of which wore gold-laced cocked hats and 
other splendors. 

To-day I paid a short visit to the gallery of the 
Pitti Palace. I looked long at a Madonna of Raphael's, 
the one which is usually kej)t in the Grand Duke's 
private apartments, only brought into the public gal- 
lery for the purpose of being copied. It is the holiest 
of all Raphael's Madonnas, with a great reserve in 
the expression, a sense of being apart, and yet with 
the utmost tenderness and sweetness ; although she 
drops her eyelids before her like a veil, as it were, 
and has a primness of eternal virginity about the 
mouth. It is one of Raphael's earlier works, when 
he mixed more religious sentiment with his paint than 
afterwards. Perugino's pictures give the impression 
of greater sincerity and earnestness than Raphael's, 
though the genius of Raphael often gave him miracu- 
lous vision. 

July 2d)th. — Last evening we went to the Powers's, 
and sat with them on the terrace, at the top of the 
house, till nearly ten o'clock. It -was a delightful, 
calm, summer evening, and we were elevated far 
above all the adjacent roofs, and had a prospect of the 



1858.] ITALY. 99 

greater part of Florence and its towers, and the sur- 
rounding hills, while directly beneath us rose the 
trees of a garden, and they hardly sent their summits 
higher than we sat. At a little distance, with only a 
house or two between, was a theatre in full action, 
the Teatro Goldoni, which is an open amphitheatre, in 
the ancient fashion, without any roof. We could see 
the upper part of the proscenium, and, had we been a 
little nearer, might have seen the whole performance, 
as did several boys who crept along the tops of the 
surrounding houses. As it was, we heard the music 
and the applause, and now and then an actor's stento- 
rian tones, when we chose to listen. Mrs. P and 

my wife, U and Master Bob, sat in a group 

together, and chatted in one corner of our aerial 
drawing-room, while Mr. Powers and myself leaned 
against the parapet, and talked of innumerable things. 
When the clocks struck the hour, or the bells rung from 
the steeples, as they are continually doing, I spoke of 
the sweetness of the Florence bells, the tones of some 
of them being as if the bell were full of liquid melody, 
and shed it through the air on being upturned. I 
had supposed, in my lack of musical ear, that the 
bells of the Campanile were the sweetest; but Mr. 
Powers says that there is a defect in their tone, and 
that the bell of the Palazzo Yecchio is the most 
melodious he ever heard. Then he spoke of his having 
been a manufacturer of organs, or, at least, of reeds 
for organs, at one period of his life. I wonder what 
he has not been ! He told me of an invention of his 
in the musical line, a jew's-harp with two tongues; 



100 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

and by and by he produced it for my inspection. It 
was carefully kept in a little wooden case, and was 
very neatly and elaborately constructed, with screws 
to tighten it, and a silver centre-piece between the 
two tongues. Evidently a great deal of thought had 
been bestowed on this little harp ; but Mr. Powers 
told me that it was an utter failure, because the 
tongues were apt to interfere and jar with one another, 
although the strain of music was very sweet and melo- 
dious — as he proved, by playing on it a little — when 
everything went right. It was a youthful production, 
and he said that its failure had been a great disap- 
pointment to him at the time ; whereupon I congrat- 
ulated him that his failures had been in small matters, 
and his successes in great ones. 

We talked, furthermore, about instinct and reason, 
and whether the brute creation have souls, and, if 
they have none, how justice is to be done them for 
their sufferings here ; and Mr. Powers came finally 
to the conclusion that brutes suffer only in appear- 
ance, and that God enjoys for them all that they 
seem to enjoy, and that man is the only intelligent 
and sentient being. We reasoned high about other 
states of being ; and I suggested the possibility that 
there might be beings inhabiting this earth, con- 
temporaneously with us, and close beside us, but of 
whose existence and whereabout we could have no 
perception, nor they of ours, because we are endowed 
with different sets of senses ; for certainly it was in 
God's power to create beings who should communicate 
with nature by innumerable other senses than those 



1858.] ITALY. 101 

few which we possess. Mr. Powers gave hospitable 
reception to this idea, and said that it had occurred 
to himself; and he has evidently thought much and 
earnestly about such matters ; but is apt to let his 
idea crystallize into a theory, before he can have 
sufficient data for it. He is a Swedenborgian in 
faith. 

The moon had risen behind the trees, while we 
were talking, and Powers intimated his idea that 
beings analogous to men — men in everything except 
the modifications necessary to adapt them to their 
physical circumstances — inhabited the planets, and 
peopled them with beautiful shapes. Each planet, 
however, must have its own standard of the beautiful, 
I suppose ; and probably his sculptor's eye would not 
see much to admire in the proportions of an inhab- 
itant of Saturn. 

The atmosphere of Florence, at least when we 
ascend a little way into it, suggests planetary specu- 
lations. Galileo found it so, and Mr. Powers and I 
pervaded the whole universe ; but finally crept down 
his garret-stairs, and parted, with a friendly pressure 
of the hand. 

VILLA MONTAUTO. 

MONTE BENT. 

August 2d. — We had grown weary of the heat of 
Florence within the walls, .... there being little 
opportunity for air and exercise except within the 
precincts of our little garden, which, also, we feared 
might breed malaria, or something akin to it. We 



102 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

have therefore taken this suburban villa for the two 
next months, and, yesterday morning, we all came 

out hither. J had preceded us with B. P . 

The villa is on a hill called Bellosguardo, about a mile 
beyond the Porta Eomana. Less than half an hour's 
walk brought us, who were on foot, to the iron gate 
of our villa, which we found shut and lo(?ked. We 
shouted to be let in, and while waiting for somebody 
to appear, there was a good opportunity to contem- 
plate the external aspect of the villa. After we had 

waited a few minutes, J came racing down to the 

gate, laughing heartily, and said that Bob 'and he had 
been in the house, but had come out, shutting the 
door behind them; and as the door closed with a 
spring-lock, they could not get in again. Now as the 
key of the outer gate as well as that of the house 

itself was in the pocket of J 's coat, left inside, we 

were shut out of our own castle, and compelled to 
carry on a siege against it, w^ithout much likelihood 
of taking it, although the garrison was willing to 

surrender. But B. P called in the assistance of 

the contadini who cultivate the ground, and live in the 
farm-house close by ; and one of them got into a 
window by means of a ladder, so that the keys were 
got, the gates opened, and we finally admitted. Be- 
fore examining any other part of the house, we 
climbed to the top of the tower, which, indeed, is not 
very high, in proportion to its massive square. Very 
probably, its original height was abbreviated, in com- 
pliance with the law that lowered so many of the 
fortified towers of noblemen within the walls of 



1858.] ITALY. 103 

Florence The stairs were not of stone, built in 

with the original mass of the tower, as in English 
castles, but of now decayed wood, which shook be- 
neath us, and grew more and more crazy as we 
ascended. It will not be many years before the height 

of the tower becomes unattainable Near at 

hand, in the vicinity of the city, we saw the convent 
of Monte Olivetto, and other structures that looked 
like convents, being built round an enclosed square ; 
also numerous white villas, many of which had towers, 
like that we were standing upon, square and massive, 
some of them battlemented on the summit, and others 
apparently modernized for domestic purposes. Among 

them U pointed out Galileo's tower, whither she 

made an excursion the other day. It looked lower 
than our own, but seemed to stand on a higher eleva- 
tion. We also saw the duke's villa, the Poggio, with 
a long avenue of cypresses leading from it, as if a 
funeral were going forth. And having wasted thus 
much of description on the landscape, I will finish 
with saying that it lacked only water to be a very 
fine one. It is strange what a difference the gleam 
of water makes, and how a scene awakens and comes 
to life wherever it is visible. The landscape, more- 
over, gives the beholder (at least, this beholder) a 
sense of oppressive sunshine and scanty shade, and 
does not incite a longing to wander through it on 
foot, as a really delightful landscape should. The 
vine, too, being cultivated in so trim a manner, does 
not suggest that idea of luxuriant fertility, which is 
the poetical notion of a vineyard. The olive orchards 



104 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

have a pale and unlovely hue. An English view 
would have been incomparably richer in its never- 
fading green ; and in my own country, the wooded 
hills would have been more delightful than these 
peaks and ridges of dreary and barren sunshine ; and 
there would have been the bright eyes of half a dozen 
httle lakes, looking heavenward, within an extent 
like that of the Val d' Arno. 

By and by mamma's carriage came along the dusty 
road, and passed through the iron gateway, which we 
had left open for her reception. We shouted down 
to her and R , and they waved their handker- 
chiefs upward to us ; and, on my way down, I met 

R and the servant coming up through the ghostly 

rooms. 

The rest of the day we spent mostly in exploring 
the premises. The house itself is of almost bewilder- 
ino; extent, insomuch that we mio-ht each of us have 
a suite of rooms individually. I have established 
myself on the ground-floor, where I have a dressing- 
room, a large vaulted saloon, hung with yellow 
damask, and a square writing-study, the walls and 
ceilings of the two latter apartments being orna- 
mented with angels and cherubs aloft in fresco, and 
with temples, statues, vases, broken columns, peacocks, 
parrots, vines, and sunflowers below. I know not how 
many more saloons, anterooms, and sleeping-chambers 
there are on this same basement story, besides an 
. equa'. number over them, and a great subterranean 
establishment. I saw some immense jars there, which 
r suppose were intended to hold oil; and iron kettles, 



1858.] ITALY. 105 

for what purpose I cannot tell. There is also a chapel 
in the house, but it is locked up, and we cannot yet 
with certainty find the door of it, nor even, in this 
great wilderness of a house, decide absolutely what 

space the holy precincts occupy. Adjoining U 's 

chamber, which is in the tower, there is a little ora- 
tory, hung round with sacred prints of very ancient 
date, and Avith crucifixes, holy-water vases, and other 
consecrated things ; and here, within a glass case, 
there is the representation of an undraped little boy 
in wax, very prettily modelled, and holding up a heart 
that looks like a bit of red sealing-w^ax. If I had 
found him anyw^here else I should have taken him for 
Cupid ; but, being in an oratory, I presume him to 
have some religious signification. In the servants' 
room a crucifix hung on one side of the bed, and a 
little vase for holy water, now overgrown with a cob- 
web, on the other ; and, no doubt, all the other sleep- 
ing-apartments would have been equally well provided, 
only that their occupants were to be heretics. 

The lower floor of the house is tolerably furnished, 
and looks cheerful with its frescos, although the bare 
pavements in every room give an impression of dis- 
comfort. But carpets are imiversally taken up in 
Italy during summer-time. It must have been an 
immense family that could have ever filled such a 
house with life. We go on voyages of discovery, and 
Avhen in quest of any particular j)oint, are likely 
enough to fetch up at some other. This morning I 
had difficulty in finding my way again to the to23 of 
the tower. One of the most peculiar rooms is con- 
5* 



106 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

structed close to the tower, under the roof of the 
main buildmg, bnt with no external w^alls on two 
sides ! It is thus left open to the air, I presume for 
the sake of coolness. A parapet runs round the ex- 
posed sides for the sake of security. Some of the 
palaces in Florence have such open loggias in their 
upper stories, and I saw others on our journey hither, 
after arriving in Tuscany. 

The grounds immediately around the house are 
laid out in gravel-walks, and ornamented with shrub- 
bery, and with what ought to be a grassy lawn ; but 
the Italian sun is quite as little favorable to beauty 
of that kind as our own. I have enjoyed the luxury, 
howTver, almost for the first time since I left my hill- 
top at the Wayside, of flinging myself at full length on 
the ground without any fear of catching cold. Moist 
England would punish a man soundly for taking such 
liberties with her greensward. A podere, or culti- 
vated tract, comprising several acres, belongs to the 
villa, and seems to be fertile, like all the surrounding 
country. The possessions of different proprietors are 
not separated by fences, but only marked out by 
ditches ; and it seems possible to walk miles and 
miles, along the intersecting paths, without obstruc- 
tion. The rural laborers, so far as I have observed, 
go about in their shirt-sleeves, and look very much 
like tanned and sunburnt Yankees. 

Last night it was really a work of time and toil to 
go about making our defensive preparations for the 
night ; first closing the iron gate, then the ponderous 
and complicated fastenings of the house door, then 



1858.] ITALY. 107 

the separate barrieadoes of each iron-barred window 
on thfe lower floor, with a somewhat slighter arrange- 
ment above. There are bolts and shutters, however, 
for every window in the house, and I suppose it 
would not be amiss to put them all in use. Our 
garrison is so small that we must depend more upon 
the strength of our fortifications than upon our own 
active efforts in case of an attack. In England, in 
an insulated country house, we should need all these 
bolts and bars, and Italy is not thought to be the 
safer country of the two. 

It deserves to be recorded that the Count Montauto, 
a nobleman, and seemingly a man of property, should 
deem it worth v/hile to let his country seat, and re- 
side during the hot months in his palace in the city, 
for the consideration of a comparatively small sum a 
month. He seems to contemplate returning hither 
for the autumn and winter, when the situation must 
be very windy and bleak, and the cold deathlike in 
these great halls ; and then, it is to be supposed, he 
■will let his palace in town. The Count, through the 
agency of his son, bargained very stiffly for, and finally 
obtained, three dollars in addition to the sum which 
w^e at first offered him. This indicates that even a 
little money is still a matter of great moment in Italy. 
Signor del Bello, who, I believe, is also a nobleman, 
haggled with us about some cracked crockery at our 
late residence, and finally demanded and received fifty 
cents in compensation. But this poor gentleman has 
been a spendthrift, and now acts as the agent of 
another. 



108 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

• August Zd. — Yesterday afternoon William Story 
called on me, he being on a day or two's excursion 
from Siena, where he is spending the summer with his 
family. He was very entertaining and conversative, 
as usual, and said, in reply to my question whether he 
were not anxious to return to Cleopatra, that he had 
already sketched out another subject for sculpture, 
which would employ him during next winter. He 
told me, what I was glad to hear, that his sketches 
of Italian life, intended for the "Atlantic Monthly," and 
supposed to be lost, have been recovered. Speaking 
of the superstitiousness of the Italians, he said that 
they universally believe in the influence of the evil 
eye. The evil influence is supposed not to be depend- 
ent on the will of the possessor of the evil eye ; on the 
contrary, the j)ersons to whom he wishes well are the 
very ones to suff'er by it. It is oftener found in 
monks than in any other class of people ; and on 
meeting a monk, and encountering his eye, an Italian 
usually makes a defensive sign by putting both hands 
behind him, with the forefingers and little fingers 
extended, although it is a controverted point whether 
it be not more efficacious to extend the hand with its 
outspread fingers towards the suspected person. It is 
considered an evil omen to meet a monk on first going 
out for the day. The evil eye may be classified with 
the phenomena of mesmerism. The Italians, espe- 
cially the Neapolitans, very generally wear amulets. 
Pio Nono, perhaps as being the chief of all monks 
and other religious people, is supposed to have an evil 
eye of tenfold malignancy; and its eff"ect has been 



1658.] ITALY. 109 

seen in the ruin of all schemes for the public good so 
soon as they are favored by him. When the pillar in 
the Piazza di Spagna, commemorative of his dogma of 
the Immaculate Conception, was to be erected, the 
people of Rome refused to be present, or to have 
anything to do with it, unless the pope promised to 
abstain from interference. His holiness did promise, 
but so far broke his word as to be present one day 
while it was being erected, and on that day a man 
was killed. A little while ago there was a Lord 
Clifford, an English Catholic nobleman, residing in 
Italy, and, happening to come to Rome, he sent his 
compliments to Pio Nono, and requested the favor of 
an interview. The pope, as it happened, was indis- 
posed, or for some reason could not see his lordship, 
but very kindly sent him his blessing. Those who 
knew of it shook their heads, and intimated that it 
would go ill with his lordship now that he had been 
blessed by Pio Nono, and the very next day poor Lord 
Clifford was dead ! His holiness had better construe 
the scriptural injunction literally, and take to blessing 
his enemies. 

I walked into town with J this morning, and, 

meeting a monk in the Via Fornace, I thought it no 
more than reasonable, as the good father fixed his eyes 
on me, to provide against the worst by putting both 
hands behind me, with the forefingers and little fingers 
stuck out. 

In speaking of the little oratory connected with 
U- — — 's chamber, I forgot to mention the most 
remarkable object in it. It is a skull, the size of 



110 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

life (or death) This part of the house must be 

verj old, probably coeval with the tower. The ceil- 
ing of U 's apartment is vaulted with intersecting 

arches ; and adjoining it is a very large saloon, like- 
wise with a vaulted and groined ceiling, and having 
a cushioned divan running all round the walls. The 
windows of these rooms look out on the Val d' Arno. 

The apartment above this saloon is of the same 
size, and hung with engraved portraits, printed on 
large sheets by the score and hundred together, and 
enclosed in wooden frames. They comprise the whole 
series of Eoman emperors, the succession of popes, the 
kings of Europe, the doges of Venice, and the sultans 
of Turkey. The engravings bear different dates be- 
tween 1685 and thirty years later, and were executed 
at Rome. 

Aiigust Uh. — We ascended our tower yesterday 
afternoon to see the sunset. In my first sketch of the 
Val d''Arno I said that the Arno seemed to hold its 
course near the bases of the hills. I now observe that 
the line of trees which marks its current divides the 
valley into two pretty equal parts, and the river runs 
nearly east and west. .... At last, when it was 
growing dark, we went down, groping our way Over 
the shaky staircases, and peeping into each dark 
chamber as we passed. I gratified J — — exceedingly 
by hitting my nose against the wall. Reaching the 
bottom, I went into the great saloon, and stood at a 
window watching the lights twinkle forth, near and 
ftir, in the valley, and listening to the convent bells 
that sounded from Monte Olivetto, and more remotely 



1858.] ITALY. Ill 

still. The stars came out, and the constellation of 
the Dipper hung exactly over the Val d' Arno, pointing 
to the North Star above the hills on my right. 

August I2th. — We drove into town yesterday after- 
noon, with Miss J31agden, to call on Mr. Kirkup, an 
old Englishman who has resided a great many years 
in Florence. He is noted as an antiquarian, and has 
the reputation of being a necromancer, not unde- 
servedly, as he is deeply interested in spirit-rappings, 
and holds converse, through a medium, w^th dead 
poets and emperors. He lives in an old house, for- 
merly a residence of the Knights Templars, hanging 
over the Arno, just as you come upon the Ponte Vec- 
chio ; and, going up a dark staircase and knocking at a 
door on one side of the landing-place, we were received 
by Mr. Kirkup. He had had notice of our visit, and 
was prepared for it, being dressed in a blue frock-coat 
of rather an old fashion, with a velvet collar, and in a 
thin waistcoat and pantaloons fresh from the drawer ; 
looking very sprucely, in short, and unlike his custom- 
ary guise, for Miss Blagden hinted to us that the poor 
gentleman is generally so untidy that it is not quite 
pleasant to take him by the hand. He is rather low 
of stature, with a pale, shrivelled face, and hair and 
beard perfectly white, and the hair of a particularly 
soft and silken texture. He has a high, thin nose, of 
the English aristocratic type ; his eyes have a queer, 
rather wild look, and the ej^ebrows are arched above 
them, so that he seems all the time to be seeing some- 
thing that Strikes him with surprise. I judged him 
to be a little crack-brained, chiefly on the strength 



112: FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

of this expression. His whole make is delicate, his 
hands white and small, and his appearance and man- 
ners those of a gentleman, with rather more embroid- 
ery of courtesy than belongs to an Englishman. He 
appeared to be very nervous, tremulous, indeed, to his 
fingers' ends, without being in any degree disturbed 
or embarrassed by our presence. Finally, he is very 
deaf ; an infirmity that quite took away my pleasure 
in the interview, because it is impossible to say any- 
thing worth while when one is compelled to raise one's 
voice above its ordinary level. 

He ushered us through two or three large rooms, 
dark, dusty, hung with antique-looking pictures, and 
lined with bookcases containing, I doubt not, a very 
curious library. Indeed, he directed my attention to 
one case, and said that he had collected those works, 
in former days, merely for the sake of laughing at 
them. They were books of magic and occult sciences. 
What he seemed really to value, however, were some 
manuscript copies of Dante, of which he showed us 
tw^o ; one, a folio on parchment, beautifully written in 
German text, the letters as clear and accurately cut as 
printed type ; the other a small volume, fit, as Mr. 
Kirkup said, to be carried in a capacious mediaeval 
sleeve. This also was on vellum, and as elegantly 
executed as the larger one ; but the larger had beau- 
tiful illuminations, the vermilion and gold of which 
looked as brilliant now as they did five centuries ago. 
Both of these books were written early in the four- 
teenth century. Mr. Kirkup has also a plaster cast 
of Dante's face, which he believes to be the original , 



1858.] ITALY. 113 

one taken from his face after death ; and he has hke- 
wise his own accurate tracing from Giotto's fresco of 
Dante in the chapel of the Bargello. This fresco was 
discovered through Mr. Kirkup's means, and the 
tracing is particularly valuable, because the original 
has been almost destroyed by rough usage in drawing 
out a nail that had been driven into the eye. It 
represents the profile of a youthful but melancholy 
face, and has the general outline of Dante's features 
in other portraits. 

Dante has held frequent communications with Mr. 
Kirkup through a medium, the poet being described 
by the medium as wearing the same dress seen in the 
youthful portrait, but as bearing more resemblance to 
the cast taken from his dead face than to the picture 
from his youthful one. 

There was a very good picture of Savonarola in one 
of the rooms, and many other portraits, paintings, and 
drawings, some of them ancient, and others the work 
of Mr. Kirkup himself. He has the torn fragment of 
an exquisite drawing of a nude figure by Rubens, and 
a portfolio of other curious drawings. And besides 
books and works of art, he has no end of antique 
knickknackeries, none of which we had any time to 
look at ; among others some instruments with which 
nuns used to torture themselves in their convents by 
way of penance. But the greatest curiosity of all, 
and no antiquit}^ was a pale, large-eyed little girl, 
about four years old, who followed the conjurers 
footsteps wherever he went. She was the brightest 
and merriest little thing in the world, and frisked 

H 



lU FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

through those shadowy old chambers, among the dead 
people's trumpery, as gayly as a butterfly flits among 
flowers and sunshine. 

The child's mother was a beautiful girl named 
Regina, whose portrait Mr. Kirkup showed us on the 
wall. I never saw a more beautiful and striking face 
claiming to be a real one. She was a Florentine, of 
low birth, and she lived with the old necromancer as 
his spiritual medium. He showed us a journal, kept 
during her lifetime, and read from it his notes of an 
interview with the Czar Alexander, when that poten- 
tate communicated to Mr. Kirkup that he had been 
poisoned. The necromancer set a great value upon 
Regina, .... and when she died he received her poor 
baby into his heart, and now considers it absolutely 
his own. At any rate, it is a happy belief for him, 
since he has nothing else in the world to love, and 
loves the child entirely, and enjoys all the bliss of 
fatherhood, though he must have lived as much as 
seventy years before he began to taste it. 

The child inherits her mother's gift of communica- 
tion with the spiritual world, so that the conjurer can 
still talk with Regina through the baby which she 
left, and not only with her, but with Dante, and any 
other great spirit that may choose to visit him. It is 
a very strange story, and this child might be put at 
once into a romance, with all her history and environ- 
ment ; the ancient Knight Templar palace, with the 
Amo flowing under the iron-barred windows, and the 
Ponte Vecchio, covered with its jewellers' shops, close 
at hand ; the dark, lofty chambers with faded frescos 



1858.] ITALY. " 115 

on the ceilings, black pictures hanging on the walls, 
old books on the shelves, and hundreds of musty 
antiquities, emitting an odor of past centuries ; the 
shrivelled, white-bearded old man, thinking all the time 
of ghosts, and looking into the child's eyes to seek 
them ; and the child herself, springing so freshly out 
of the soil, so pretty, so intelligent, so playful, with 
never a playmate save the conjurer and a kitten. It 
is a Persian kitten, and lay asleep in a window ; but 
when I touched it, it started up at once in as game- 
some a mood as the child herself. 

The child looks pale, and no wonder, seldom or 
never stirring out of that old palace, or away from 
the river atmosphere. Miss Blagden advised Mr. 
Kirkup,to go with her to the seaside or into the 
country, and he did not deny that it might do her 
good, but seemed to be hampered by an old man's 
sluggishness and dislike of change. I think he will 
not live a great while, for he seems very frail. When 
he dies the little girl will inherit what property he 
may leave. A lady, Catharine Fleming, an English- 
woman, and a friend of Mr. Kirkup, has engaged to 
take her in charge. She followed us merrily to the 
door, and so did the Persian kitten, and Mr. Kirkup 
shook hands with us, over and over again, with viva- 
cious courtesy, his manner having been characterized 
by a great deal of briskness throughout the interview. 
He expressed himself delighted to have met me 
(whose books he had read), and said that the day 
would be a memorable one to him, — which I did not 
in the least believe. 



116 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

Mr. Kirkup is an intimate friend of Trelawny, 
author of ''Adventures of a Younger Son," and, long 
ago, the latter promised him that, if he ever came 
into possession of the family estate, he would divide 
it with him. Trelawny did really succeed to the es- 
tate, and lost no time in forwarding to his friend the 
legal documents, entitling him to half of the property. 
But Mr. Kirkup declined the gift, as he himself was 
not destitute, and Trelawny had a brother. There 
were two pictures of Trelawny in the saloons, one a 
slight sketch on the wall, the other a half-length por- 
trait in a Turkish dress; both handsome, but indi- 
cating no very amiable character. It is not easy to 
forgive Trelawny for uncovering dead Byron's limbs, 
and telling that terrible story about them, — .equally 
disgraceful to himself, be it truth or a lie. 

It seems that Regina had a lover, and a sister who 

was very disreputable It rather adds than 

otherwise to the romance of the affair, — the idea that 
this pretty little elf has no right whatever to the 
asylum which she has found. Her name is Imogen. 

The small manuscript copy of Dante which he 
showed me was written by a Florentine gentleman 
of the fourteenth century, one of whose ancestors the 
poet had met and talked with in Paradise. 

August 19^/i. — Here is a good Italian incident, 
which I find in Valery. Andrea del Castagno was a 
painter in Florence in the fifteenth century ; and he 
had a friend, likewise a painter, Domenico of Venice. 
The latter had the secret of painting in oils, and 
yielded to Castagno's entreaties to impart it to him. 



1858.] ITALY. 117 

Desirous of being the sole possessor of this great 
secret, Castagno waited only the night to assassinate 
Domenico, who so little suspected his treachery, that 
he besought those who found him bleeding and dying 
to take him to his friend Castagno, that he might die 
in his arms. The murderer lived to be seventy-four 
years old, and his crime was never suspected till he 
himself revealed it on his death-bed. Domenico did 
actually die in Castagno's arms. The death scene 
would have been a good one for the latter to paint 
in oils. 

September \st. — Few things journalizable have hap- 
pened during the last month, because Florence and 
the neighborhood have lost their novelty ; and fur- 
thermore, I usually spend the whole day at home, 
having been engaged in planning and sketching out 
a romance. I have now done with this for the 
present, and mean to employ the rest of the time we 
stay here chiefly in revisiting the galleries, and seeing 
what remains to be seen in Florence. 

Last Saturday, August 28th, we went to take tea at 
Miss Blagden's, who has a weekly reception on that 
evening. We found Mr. Powers there, and by and by 

Mr. Boott and Mr. Trollope came m. Miss has 

lately been exercising her faculties as a spiritual 
waiting-medium ; and, the conversation turning on 
that subject, Mr. Powers related some things that he 
had witnessed through the agency of Mr. Hume, who 
had held a session or two at his house. He described 
the apparition of two mysterious hands from beneath 
a tablp round which the party were seated. These 



118 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

hands purported to belong to the aunt of the Countess 
Cotterel, who was present, and were a pair of thin, 
delicate, aged, ladylike hands and arms, appearing 
at the edge of the table, and terminating at the elbow 
in a sort of white mist. One of the hands took up a 
fan and began to use it. The countess then said, 
"Fan yourself as you used to do, dear aunt"; and 
forthwith the hands waved the fan back and forth in 
a peculiar manner, which the countess recognized as 
the manner of her dead aunt. The spirit was then 
requested to fan each member of the party; and 
accordingly, each separate individual round the table 
was fanned in turn, and felt the breeze sensibly upon 
his face. Finally, the hands sank beneath the table, 
I believe Mr. Powers said ; but I am not quite sure 
that they did not melt into the air. During this 
apparition, Mr. Hume sat at the table, but not in 
such a position or within such distance that he could 
have put out or managed the spectral hands ; and of 
this Mr. Powers satisfied himself by taking precisely 
the same position after the party had retired. Mr. 
Powers did not feel the hands at this time, but he 
afterwards felt the touch of infant hands, which were 
at the time invisible. He told of many of the won- 
ders, which seem to have as much right to be set 
down as facts as anything else that depends on human 

testimony. For example, Mr. K , one of the party, 

gave a sudden start and exclamation. He had felt on 
his knee a certain token, which could have been given 
him only by a friend, long ago in his grave. Mr. 
Powers inquired what was the last thing that had 



1858.] ITALY. 119 

been given as a present to a deceased child ; and 
suddenly both he and his wife felt a prick as of some 
sharp instrument, on their knees. The present had 
beeu a penknife. I have forgotten other incidents 
quite as striking as these ; but, with the exception 
of the spirit-hands, they seemed to be akin to those 
that have been produced by mesmerism, returning the 
inquirer's thoughts and veiled recollections to himself, 
as answers to his queries. The hands are certainly 
an inexplicable phenomenon. Of course, they are not 
portions of a dead body, nor any other kind of sub- 
stance ; they are impressions on the two senses, sight 
and touch, but how produced I cannot tell. Even 
admitting their appearance, — and certainly I do 
admit it as freely and fully as if I had seen them 
myself, — there is no need of supposing them to come 
from the world of departed spirits. 

Powers seems to put entire faith in the verity of 
spiritual communications, while acknowledging the 
difficulty of identifying spirits as being what they 
pretend to be. He is a Swedenborgian, and so far 
prepared to put faith in many of these phenomena. 
As for Hume, Powers gives a decided opinion that he 
is a knave, but thinks him so organized, nevertheless, 
as to be a particularly good medium for spiritual 
communications. Spirits, I suppose, like earthly 
people, are obliged to use such instruments as will 
answer their purposes ; but rather than receive a 
message from a dead friend through the organism 
of a rogue or charlatan, methinks I would choose to 
wait till we meet. But what most astonishes me is 



120 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

the indifference with wliich I listen to these marvels. 
They throw old ghost-stories quite into the shade ; 
they bring the whole world of spirits down amongst 
us, visibly and audibly ; they are absolutely proved 
to be sober facts by evidence that would satisfy us 
of any other alleged realities ; and yet I cannot force 
my mind to interest myself in them. They are facts 
to my understanding, which, it might have been 
anticipated, would have been the last to acknowledge 
them ; but they seem not to be facts to my intuitions 
and deeper perceptions. My inner soul does not in 
the least admit them ; there is a mistake somewhere. 
So idle and empty do I feel these stories to be, that I 
hesitated long whether or no to give up a few pages 
of this not very important journal to the record of 
them. 

We have had written communications through 

Miss with several spirits ; my wife's father, 

mother, two brothers, and a sister, who died long ago, 
in infancy ; a certain Mary Hall, who announces her- 
self as the guardian spirit of Miss ; and, queerest 

of all, a Mary Runnel, who seems to be a wandering 
spirit, having relations with nobody, but thrusts her 
finger into everybody's affairs. My wife's mother is 
the principal communicant ; she expresses strong 
affection, and rejoices at the opportunity of conversing 
with her daughter. She often says very pretty things ; 
for instance, in a dissertation upon heavenly music ; 
but there is a lack of substance in her talk, a want of 
gripe, a delusive show, a sentimental surface, with no 
bottom beneath it. The same sort of thing has struck 



1858.] ITALY. 121 

me in all the poetry and prose that I have read from 
spiritual sources. I should judge that these effusions 
emanated from earthly minds, but had undergone 
some process that had deprived them of solidity and 
warmth. In the communications between my wife 
And her mother, I cannot help thinking that (Miss 

' being unconsciously in a mesmeric state) all the 

responses are conveyed to her fingers from my wife's 
mind 

We have tried the spirits by various test questions, 
on every one of w^hich they have failed egregiously. 
Here, however, the aforesaid Mary Runnel comes into 
play. The other spirits have told us that the veracity 
of this spirit is not to be depended upon ; and so, 
whenever it is possible, poor Mary Runnel is thrust 
forward to bear the odium of every mistake or false- 
hood. They have avowed themselves responsible for 
all statements signed by themselves, and have there- 
by brought themselves into more than one inextricable 
dilemma ; but it is very funny, where a response or a 
matter of fact has not been thus certified, how invari- 
ably Mary Runnel is made to assume the discredit of 
it, on its turning cut to be false. It is the most in- 
genious arrangement that could possibly have been 
contrived ; and somehow or other, the pranks of this 
lying spirit give a reality to the conversations which 
the more respectable ghosts quite fail in imparting. 

The whole matter seems to me a sort of dreaming 
awake. It resembles a dream, in that the w'holo 
material is, from the first, in the dreamer's mind, 
though concealed at various depths below the surface ; 

VOL. II. 6 



122 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

the dead appear alive, as they always do in dreams ; 
unexpected combinations occur, as continually in 
dreams ; the mind speaks through the various persons 
of the drama, and sometimes astonishes itself with its 
own wit, wisdom, and eloquence, as often in dreams ; 
but, in both cases, the intellectual manifestations are 
really of a very flimsy texture. Mary Runnel is the 
only personage who does not come evidently from 
dream-land ; and she, I think, represents that lurking 
scepticism, that sense of unreality, of which we are 
often conscious, amid the most vivid phantasmagoria 
of a dream. I should be glad to believe iu the genu- 
ineness of these spirits, if I could ; but the above is 
the conclusion to which my soberest thoughts tend. 
There remains, of course, a great deal for which I can- 
not account, and I cannot sufficiently wonder at the 
pigheadedness both of metaphysicians and physiolo- 
gists, in not accepting the phenomena, so far as to 
make them the subject of investigation. 

In writing the communications, Miss holds the 

pencil rather loosely between her fingers ; it moves 
rapidly, and with equal facility whether she fixes her 
eyes on the paper or not. The handwriting has far 
more freedom than her own. At the conclusion of a 
sentence, the pencil \sijs itself down. She 'sometimes 
has a perception of each word before it is written ; at 
other times, she is quite unconscious what is to come 
next. Her integrity is absolutely indubitable, and 
she herself totally disbelieves in the spiritual authen- 
ticity of what is communicated through her medium. 

September 3d. — We walked into Florence yester- 



1858.] ITALY. 123 

day, betimes after breakfast, it being comfortably cool, 
and a gray, English sky ; though, indeed, the clouds 
had a tendency to mass themselves more than they 
do on an overcast English day. We found it warmer 
in Florence, but not inconveniently so, even in the 
sunniest streets and squares. 

We went to the Uffizzi gallery, the whole of which 
with its contents is now familiar to us, except the 
room containing drawings ; and our to-day's visit w^as 
especially to them. The door giving admittance to 
them is the very last in the gallery ; and the rooms, 
three in number, are, 1 should judge, over the Loggia 
de Lanzi, looking on the Grand Ducal Piazza. The 
drawings hang on the walls, framed and glazed ; and 
number, perhaps, from one to two hundred in each 
room ; but this is only a small portion of the collec- 
tion, which amounts, it is said, to twenty thousand, 
and is reposited in portfolios. The sketches on the 
walls are changed, from time to time, so as to exhibit 
all the most interesting ones in turn. Their whole 
charm is artistic, imaginative, and intellectual, and in 
no degTee of the upholstery kind ; their outward pre- 
sentment being, in general, a design hastily shadowed 
out, by means of colored crayons, on tinted paper, or 
perhaps scratched rudely in pen and ink ; or drawn in 
pencil or charcoal, and half rubbed out ; very rough 
things, indeed, in many instances, and the more inter- 
esting on that account, because it seems as if the 
artist had bestirred himself to catch the first glimpse 
of an image that did but reveal itself and vanish. The 
sheets, or sometimes scraps of paper, on which they 



124 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

are drawn, are discolored with age, creased, soiled ; 
but yet you are magnetized by the hand of Raphael, 
Michael Angelo, Leonardo, or whoever may have jotted 
down those rough-looking master-touches. They cer- 
tainly possess a charm that is lost in the finished pic- 
ture ; and I was more sensible of forecasting thought, 
skill, and prophetic design, in these sketches than in 
the most consummate works that have been elaborated 
from them. There is something more divine in these ; 
for I suppose the first idea of a picture is real inspira- 
tion, and all the subsequent elaboration of the master 
serves but to cover up the celestial germ with some- 
thing that belongs to himself. At any rate, the first 
sketch is the more suggestive, and sets the spectator's 
imagination at work ; whereas the picture, if a good 
one, leaves him nothing to do ; if bad, it confuses, 
stupefies, disenchants, and disheartens him. First 
thoughts have an aroma and fragrance in them, that 
they do not lose in three hundred years ; for so old, 
and a good deal more, are some of these sketches. 

None interested me more than some drawings, on 
separate pieces of paper, by Perugino, for his picture 
of the mother and friends of Jesus round his dead 
body, now at the Pitti Palace. The attendant figures 
are distinctly made out, as if the Virgin, and John, 
and Mary Magdalen had each favored the painter with 
a sitting ; but the body of Jesus lies in the midst, 
dimly hinted with a few pencil marks. 

There were several designs by Michael Angelo, none 
of which made much impression on me ; the most 
striking was a very ugly demon, afterwards painted 



1858.] ITALY. 125 

in the Sistine Chapel. Baphael shows several sketches 
of Madonnas, — one of which has flowered into the 
Grand Duke's especial Madonna at the Pitti Palace, 
but with a different face. His sketches were mostly 
very rough in execution ; but there were two or three 
designs for frescos, I think, in the Vatican, very care- 
fully executed; perhaps because these works were 
mainly to be done by other hands than his own. It 
seems to me that the Pre-Raphaelite artists made more 
careful drawings than the later ones ; and it rather 
surprised me to see how much science they pos- 
sessed. 

We looked at few other things in the gallery ; and, 
indeed, it' was not one of the days when works of art 
find me impressible. We stopped a little while in the 
Tribune, but the Venus di Medici seemed to me to- 
day little more than any other piece of yellowish 
white marble. How strange that a goddess should 
stand before us absolutely unrecognized, even when 
we know by previous revelations that she is nothing 
short of divine ! It is also strange that, unless when 
one feels the ideal charm of a statue, it becomes one 
of the most tedious and irksome things in the world. 
Either it must be a celestial thing or an old lump of 
stone, dusty and time-soiled, and tiring out your 
patience with eternally looking just the same. Once 
in a while you penetrate through the crust of the 
old sameness, and see the statue forever new and 
immortally young. 

Leaving the gallery we walked towards the Duomo, 
and on our way stopped to look at the beautiful Gothic 



126 FRENCH AXD ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

niches hollowed into the exterior walls of the Church 
of San Michele. They are now in the process of being 
cleaned, and each niche is elaborately inlaid with 
precious marbles, and some of them magnificently 
gilded ; and they are all surmounted with marble 
canopies as light and graceful as frost-work. Within 
stand statues, St. George, and many other saints, by 
Donatello and others, and all taking a hold upon one's 
sympathies, even if they be not beautiful. Classic 
statues escape you with their slippery beauty, as if 
they were made of ice. Rough and ugly things can 
be clutched. This is nonsense, and yet it means 

something The streets were thronged and vo- 

ciferative with more life and outcry than usual. It 
must have been market-day in Florence, for the com- 
merce of the streets was in great vigor, narrow tables 
being set out in them, and in the squares, burdened 
with all kinds of small merchandise, such as cheap 
jewelry, glistening as brightly as what we had just 
seen in the gem-room of the Uffizzi ; crockery ware ; 
toys, books, Italian and French ; silks ; slippers ; old 
iron ; all advertised by the dealers with terribly loud 
and high voices, that reverberated harshly from side 
to side of the narrow streets. Italian street-cries go 
through the head, not that they are so very sharp, 
but exceedingly hard, like a blunt iron bar. 

We stood at the base of the Campanile, and looked 
at the bas-reliefs which wreathe it round ; and, above 
them, a row of statues ; and from bottom to top a 
marvellous minuteness of inlaid marbles, filling up 
the vast and beautiful design of this heaven-aspiring 



1858.] ITALY. 127 

tower. Looking upward to its lofty summit, — where 
angels might alight, lapsing downward from heaven, 
and gaze curiously at the bustle of men below, — I 
could not but feel that there is a moral charm in this 
faithful minuteness of Gothic architecture, filling up 
its outline with a million of beauties that perhaps 
may never be studied out by a single spectator. It 
is the very process of nature, and no doubt produces 
an effect that we know not of. Classic architecture is 
nothing but an outline, and affords no little points, no 
interstices w^here human feelings may cling and over- 
grow it like ivy. The charm, as I said, seems to be 
moral rather than intellectual ; for in the gem-room 
of the-Uffizzi you may see fifty designs, elaborated on 
a small scale, that have just as much merit as the 
design of the Campanile. If it were only five inches 
long, it might be a case for some article of toilet ; 
being two hundred feet high, its prettiness develops 
into grandeur as well as beauty, and it becomes really 
one of the wonders of the world. The design of the 
Pantheon, on the contrary, would retain its sublimity 
on whatever scale it might be represented. 

Returning homewards, we crossed the Ponte Vecchio, 
and w^ent to the Museum of Natural History, where 
we gained admittance into the rooms dedicated to 
Galileo. They consist of a vestibule, a saloon, and a 
semicircular tribune, covered with a frescoed dome, 
beneath which stands a colossal statue of Galileo, 
long-bearded, and clad in a student's gow^n, or some 
voluminous garb of that kind. Around the tribune, 
beside and behind the statue, are six niches, — in one 



128 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

of which is preserved a forefinger of Galileo, fixed on 
a little gilt pedestal, and pointing npward, under a 
glass cover. It is very much shrivelled and mummy- 
like, of the color of parchment, and is little more 
than a finger-bone, with the dry skin or flesh flaking 
away from it ; on the whole, not a very delightful 
relic ; but Galileo used to point heavenward with this 
finger, and I hope has gone whither he pointed. 

Another niche contains two telescopes, wherewith 
he made some of his discoveries ; they are perhaps a 
yard long, and of very small calibre. Other astro- 
nomical instruments are displayed in the glass cases 
that line the rooms ; but I did not understand their 
use any better than the monks, who wished to burn 
Galileo for his heterodoxy about the planetary 
system 

After dinner I climbed the tower Florence 

lay in the sunshine, level, compact, and small of 
compass. Above the tiled roofs rose the tower of the 
Palazzo Vecchio, the loftiest and the most picturesque, 
though built, I suppose, with no idea of making it so. 
But it attains, in a singular degree, the end of causing 
the imagination to fly upward and alight on its airy 
battlements. Near it I beheld the square mass of Or 
San Michele, and farther to the left the bulky Duomo 
and the Campanile close beside it, like a slender 
bride or daughter ; the dome of San Lorenzo too. 
The Arno is nowhere visible. Beyond, and on all 
sides of the city, the hills pile themselves lazily 
upward in ridges, here and there developmg into a 
peak ; towards their bases white villas were strewn 



1358.] ITALY. * 129 

numerously, but the upper region was lonely and 
bare. 

As we passed under the arch of the Porta Romana 
this morning, on our way into the city, we saw a 
queer object. It was what we at first took for a 
living man, in a garb of light reddish or yellowish 
red color, of antique or priestly fashion, and with a 
cowl falling behind. His face was of the same hue, 
and seemed to have been powdered, as the faces of 
maskers sometimes are. He sat in a cart, which he 
seemed to be driving into the city with a load of 
earthen jars and pipkins, the color of which was 
precisely like his own. On closer inspection, this 
priestly figure proved to be likewise an image of 
earthenware, but his lifelikeness had a very strange 
and rather ghastly effect. Adam, perhaps, was made 
of just such red earth, and had the complexion of this 
figure. 

September 1th. — I walked into town yesterday 
morning, by way of the Porta San Frediano. The 
gate of a city might be a good locality for a chapter in 
a novel, or for a little sketch by itself, whether by 
painter or writer. The great arch of the gateway, 
piercing through the depth and height of the massive 
masonry beneath the . battlemented summit ; the 
shadow brooding below, in the immense thickness 
of the wall and beyond it, the vista of the street, 
sunny and swarming with life ; outside of the gate, 
a throng of carts, laden with fruits, vegetables, small 
flat barrelo of wine, waiting to be examined by the 
custom-house officers; carriages too, and foot-passen- 
6* I 



1.30. FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

gers entering, and others swarming outward. Under 
the shadowy arch are the offices of the police and. 
customs, and probably the guard-room of the soldiers, 
all hollowed out in the mass of the gateway. Civil 
officers loll on chairs in the shade, perhaps with an 
awning over their heads. Where the sun falls aslant- 
wise under the arch a sentinel, with musket and 
bayonet, paces to and fro in the entrance, and other 
soldiers- lounge close by. The life of the city seems 
to be compressed and made more intense by this 
barrier ; and on passing within it you do not breathe 
quite so freely, yet are sensible of an enjoyment in 
the close elbowing throng, the clamor of high voices 
from side to side of the street, and the million of 
petty sights, actions, traffics, and personalities, all so 
squeezed together as to become a great whole. 

The street by which I entered led me to the Carraja 
Bridge ; crossing which, 1 kept straight onward till I 
came to the Church of Santa Maria Novella. Doubt- 
less, it looks just the same as when Boccaccio's party 
stood in a cluster on its broad steps arranging their 
excursion to the villa. Thence 1 went to the Church 
of St. Lorenzo, which 1 entered by the side door, and 
found the organ sounding and a religious ceremony 
going forward. It is a church of sombre aspect, with 
its gray walls and pillars, but was decked out for some 
festivity with hangings of scarlet damask and gold. 
I sat awhile to rest myself, and then pursued my 
way to the Duomo. I entered, and looked at Sir 
John Hawkwood's painted effigy, and at several busts 
and statues, and at the windows of the chapel sur- 



1858.] ITALY. 151 

rounding the dome, through which the sunshine 
glowed, white in the outer air, but a hundred-hued 
splendor within. I tried to bring up the scene of 
Lorenzo di Medici's attempted assassination, but with 
no great success ; and after listening a little while to 
the chanting of the priests and acolytes, I went to the 
Bank. It is in a palace of which Raphael was the 
architect, in the Piazza Gran Duca. 

I next went, as a matter of course, to the Uffizzi 
gallery, and, in the first place, to the Tribune, where 
the- Venus di Medici deigned to reveal herself rather 

more satisfactorily than at my last visit I 

looked into all the rooms, bronzes, drawings, and 
gem-room ; a volume might easily be written upon 
either subject. The contents of the gem-room espe- 
cially require to be looked at separately in order to 
convince one's self of their minute magnificences ; for, 
among so many, the eye slips from one to another 
with only a vague outward sense that here are whole 
shelves full of little miracles, both of nature's material 
and man's workmanship. Greater [larger] things can 
be reasonably well appreciated with a less scrupulous 
though broader attention; but in order to estimate 
the brilliancy of the diamond eyes of a little agate 
bust, for instance, you have to screw your mind down 
to them and nothing else. You must sharpen your 
faculties of observation to a point, and touch the 
object exactly on the right spot, or you do not appre- 
ciate it at all. It is a troublesome process when there 
are a thousand such objects to be seen. 

I stood at an open window in the transverse corri- 



132 FREKCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [I858. 

dor, and looked down upon the Arno, and across at 
the range of edifices that impend over it on the 
opposite side. The river, I should judge, may be a 
hundred or a hundred and fifty yards wide in its 
course between the Ponte alle Grazie and the PontQ 
Vecchio ; that is, the width between strand and 
strand is at least so much. The river, however, leaves 
a broad margin of mud and gravel on its right bank, 
on v/hich water-weeds grow pretty abundantly, and 
creep even into the stream. On my first arrival in 
Florence I thought the goose-pond green of the water 
rather agreeable than otherwise ; but its hue is now 
that of unadulterated mud, as yellow as the Tiber 
itself, yet not impressing me as being enriched with 
city sewerage like that other famous river. From the 
Ponte alle Grazie downward, half-way towards the 
Ponte Vecchio, there is an island of gravel, and the 
channel on each side is so shallow as to allow the passage 
of men and horses, wading not overleg. I have seen 
fishermen wading the main channel from side to side, 
their feet sinking into the dark mud, and thus dis- 
coloring the yellow water with a black track visible, 
step by step, through its shallowness. But still the 
Arno is a mountain stream, and liable to be tetchy 
and turbulent like all its kindred, and no doubt it 
often finds its borders of hewn stone not too far apart 
for its convenience. 

Along the right shore, beneath the Uffizzi and the 
adjacent buildings, there is a broad paved way, with 
a parapet ; on the opposite shore the edifices are 
lauilt directly upon the river's edge, and impend over 



1858.] ITALY. 133 

the water, supported upon arches and machicolations, 
as I think that pecuhar arrangement of buttressing 
arcades is called. The houses are picturesquely vari- 
ous in height, from two or three stories to seven; 
picturesque in hue likewise, — pea-green, yellow, white, 
and of aged discoloration, — but all with green blinds ; 
picturesque also in the courts and galleries that look 
upon the river, and in the wide arches that open 
beneath, intended perhaps to afford a haven for the 
household boat. Nets were suspended before one or 
two of the houses, as if the inhabitants were in the 
habit of fishing out of window. As a general effect, 
the houses, though often palatial in size and height, 
have a shabby, neglected aspect, and are jumbled 
too closely together. Behind their range the city 
swells upward in a hillside, which rises to a great 
height above, forming, I believe, a part of the Boboli 
Gardens. 

I returned homewards over the Ponte Vecchio, 
which is a continuous street of ancient houses, except 
over the central arch, so that a stranger might easily 
cross the river without knowing it. In these small, 
old houses there is a community of goldsmiths, who 
set out their glass cases, and hang their windows with 
rings, bracelets, necklaces, strings of pearl, ornaments 
of malachite and coral, and especially with Florentine 
mosaics ; watches, too, and snuff-boxes of old fashion 
or new ; offerings for shrines also, such as silver 
hearts pierced with swords ; an infinity of pretty 
things, the manufacture of which is continually going 
on in the little back-room of each little shop. This 



1-34 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l85a 

gewgaw business has been established on the Poate 
Vecchio for centuries, although, long since, it was an 
art of far higher pretensions than now. Benyenuto 
Cellini had his workshop here, probably in one of 
these self-same little nooks. It would have been a 
ticklish affair to be Benvenuto's fellow- workman with- 
in such narrow limits. 

Going out of the Porta Romana, I walked for some 
distance along the city wall, and then, turning to the 
left, toiled up the hill of Bellosguardo, through narrow 
zigzag lanes between high walls of stone or plastered 
brick, where the sun had the fairest chance to frizzle 
me. There were scattered villas and houses, here 
and there concentrating into a little bit of a street, 
paved with flagstones from side to side, as in the city, 
and shadowed quite across its narrowness by the 
height of the houses. Mostly, however, the way was 
inhospitably sunny, and shut out by the high wall 
from every glimpse of a view, except in one spot, 
where Florence spread itself before my eyes, with, 
every. tower, dome, and spire which it contains. A. 
little way farther on my own gray tower rose before 
me, the most welcome object that I had seen in the 
course of the day. 

September \Qth. — I went into town again yesterday, 
by way of the Porta San Frediano, and observed that 
this gate (like the other gates of Florence, as far as I 
have observed) is a tall, square structure of stone or 
brick, or both, rising high above the adjacent wall, 
and having a range of open loggie in the upper story. 
The arch externally is about half the height of the 



1858,] ITALY. 1.35 

structure. Inside, towards the town, it rises nearly 
to the roof. On each side of the arch there is much 
room for offices, apartments, storehouses, or whatever 
else. On the outside of the gate, along the base, are 
those iron rings and sockets for torches, which are 
said to be the distinguishing symbol of ilkistrious 
houses. As contrasted with the vista of the narrow, 
swarming street through the arch from without, the 
view from the inside might be presented with a 
ghmpse of the free blue sky. 

. I strolled a little about Florence, and went into two 
or three churches ; into that of the Annunziata for 
one. I have already described this church, with its 
general magnificence, and it was more magnificent 
than ever to-day, being hung with scarlet silk and 
gold-embroidery. A great many people were at their 
devotions, thronging principally around the Virgin's 
shrine. I was struck now with the many bas-reliefs 
and busts in the costume of their respective ages, and 
seemingly with great accuracy of portraiture, in the 
passage leading from the front of the church into the 
cloisters. The marble was not at aU abashed nor de- 
graded by being made to assume the guise of the 
mediaeval furred robe, or the close-fitting tunic with 
elaborate rufi', or the breastplate and gorget, or the 
flowing wig, or whatever the actual costume might be ; 
and one is sensible of a rectitude and reality in the 
affair, and respects the dead people for not putting 
themselves into an eternal masquerade. The dress of 
the present day will look equally respectable in one 
or two hundred years. 



136 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

The Fair is still going on, and one of its principal 
centres is before this church, in the Piazza of the 
Annunziata. Cloth is the chief commodity offered 
for sale, and none of the finest ; coarse, unbleached 
linen and cotton prints for country-people's wear, to- 
gether with yarn, stockings, and here and there an 
assortment of bright-colored ribbons. Playthings, of 
a very rude fashion, were also displayed ; likewise 
books in Italian and French ; and a great deal of 
ironwork. Both here and in Rome they have this odd 
custom of offering rusty iron implements for sale, 
spread out on the pavements. There was a good deal 
of tinware, too, glittering in the sunshine, especially 
around the pedestal of the bronze statue of Duke Fer- 
dinand, who curbs his horse and looks down upon the 
bustling piazza in a very stately way The peo- 
ple attending the fair had mostly a rustic appearance ; 
sunburnt faces, thin frames ; no beauty, no bloom, no 
joyousness of young or old ; an anxious aspect, as if 
life were no easy or holiday matter with them ; but I 
should take them to be of a kindly nature, and reason- 
ably honest. Except the broad-brimmed Tuscan hats 
of the women, there was no peculiarity of costume. 
At a careless glance I could very well have mis- 
taken most of the men for Yankees ; as for the wo- 
men, there is very little resemblance between them 
and ours, — the old being absolutely hideous, and the 
young ones very seldom pretty. It was a very dull 
crowd. They do not generate any warmth among 
themselves by contiguity ; they have no pervading 
sentiment, such as is continually breaking out in 



1858.] ITALY. 137 

rough merriment from an American crowd ; they have 
nothing to do with one another ; they are not a crowd, 
considered as one mass, but a collection of individuals. 
A despotic government has perhaps destroyed their 
principle of cohesion, and crumbled them to atoms. 
Italian crowds are noted for their civility ; possibly 
they deserve credit for native courtesy and gentleness ; 
possibly, on the other hand, the crowd has not 
spirit and self-consciousness enough to be rampant. I 
wonder whether they will ever hold another parlia- 
ment in the Piazza of Santa Croce ! 

I paid a visit to the gallery of the Pitti Palace. 
There is too large an intermixture of Andrea del 
Sarto's pictures in this gallery ; everywhere you see 
them, cold, proper, and uncriticisable, looking so much 
like first-rate excellence, that you inevitably quarrel 
with your own taste for not admiring them 

It was one of the days when my mind misgives 
me w^hether the pictorial art be not a humbug, and 
when the minute accuracy of a fly in a Dutch picture 
of fruit and flowers seems to me something more 
reliable than the master-touches of Raphael. The 
gallery was considerably thronged, and many of the 
visitors appeared to be from the country, and of a 
class intermediate between gentility and labor. Is 
there such a rural class in Italy 1 I saw a respect- 
able-looking man feeling awkward and uncomfortable 
in a new and glossy pair of pantaloons not yet bent 
and creased to his natural movement. 

Nothing pleased me better to-day than some amber 
cups, in one of the cabinets of curiosities. They ar<^ 



138 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [lS58. 

richly wrought, and the material is as if the artist 
had compressed a great deal of sunshine together, 
and when sufficiently solidified had moulded these cups 
out of it and let them harden. This simile was sug- 
gested by . 

Leaving the palace, I entered the Boboli Gardens, 
and wandered up and down a good deal of its uneven 
surface, through broad, well-kept edges of box, sprout- 
ing loftily, trimmed smoothly, and strewn between 
with cleanly gravel ; skirting along plantations of 
aged trees, throwing a deep shadow within their 
precincts; passing many statues, not of the finest 
art, yet approaching so near it, as to serve just as 
good a purpose for garden ornament ; coming now and 
then to the borders of a fish- pool, or a pond, where 
stately swans circumnavigated an island of flowers ; — 
all very fine and very wearisome. I have never 
enjoyed this garden ; perhaps because it suggests 
dress-coats, and such elegant formalities. 

September Wth. — We have heard a good deal of 
spirit matters of late, especially of wonderful incidents 
that attended Mr. Hume's visit to Florence, two or 
three years ago. Mrs. Powers told a very marvellous 
thing; how that when Mr. Hume was holding a 
seance in her house, and several persons present, a 
great scratching was heard in a neighboring closet. 
She addressed the spirit, and requested it not to 
disturb the company then, as they were busy with 
other aff'airs, promising to converse with it on a future 
occasion. On a subsequent night, accordingly, the 
scratching was renewed, with the utmost violence ; 



1858.] ITALjr. 139 

and in reply to Mrs. Powers's questions, the spirit 
assured her that it was not one, but legion, being the 
ghosts of twenty- seven monks, who were miserable 
and without hope ! The house now occupied by 
Powers was formerly a convent, and I suppose these 
were the spirits of all the wicked monks that had 
ever inhabited it; at least, I hope that there were 
not such a number of damnable sinners extant at any 
one time. These ghostly fathers must have been very 
improper persons in their lifetime, judging by the 
indecorousness of their behavior even after death, and 
in such dreadful circumstances ; for they pulled Mrs. 

Powers's skirts so hard as to break the gathers 

It was not ascertained that they desired to have any- 
thing done for their eternal welfare, or that their 
situation was capable of amendment anyhow ; but, 
being exhorted to refrain from further disturbance, 
they took their departure, after making the sign of 
the cross on the breast of each person present. This 
was very singular in such reprobates, who, by their 
own confession, had forfeited all claim to be benefited 
by that holy symbol : it curiously suggests that the 
forms of religion may still be kept up in purgatory 
and hell itself. The sign was made in a wa}^ that 
conveyed the sense of something devilish and spiteful ; 
the perpendicular line of the cross being drawn gently 
enough, but the transverse one sharply and violently, 
so as to leave a painful impression. Perhaps the 
monks meant this to express their contempt and 
hatred for heretics; and how queer, that this an- 
tipathy should survive their own damnation ! But I 



140 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l85a 

cannot help hoping that the case of these poor devils 
may not be so desperate as they think. They cannot 
be wholly lost, because their desire for communica- 
tion with mortals shows that they need sympathy, 
therefore are not altogether hardened, therefore, with 
loving treatment, may be restored. 

A great many other wonders took place within the 

knowledge and experience of Mrs. P . She saw, 

not one pair of hands only, but many. The head of 
one of her dead children, a little boy, was laid in 
her lap, not in ghastly fashion, as a head out of the 
coffin and the gi'ave, but just as the living child 
might have laid it on his mother's knees. It was 
invisible, by the by, and she recognized it by the 
features and the character of the hair, through the sense 
of touch. Little hands grasped hers. In short, these 
soberly attested incredibilities are so numerous that 
I forget nine tenths of them, and judge the others 
too cheap to be written down. Christ spoke the 
truth surely, in saying that men would not believe, 
" though one rose from the dead." In my own case, 
the fact makes absolutely no impression. I regret 
such confirmation of truth as this. 

Within a mile of our villa stands the Villa Colum- 
baria, a large house, built round a square court. 
Like Mr. Powers's residence, it was formerly a convent. 
It is inhabited by Major Gregorie, an old soldier of 
-Waterloo and various other fights, and his family 

consists of Mrs. , the widow of one of the major's 

friends, and her two daughters. We have become 
acquainted with the family, and Mrs. , the mar- 



1858.] ITALY. 141 

ried daughter, has lent us a written statement of her 
experiences with a ghost, who has haunted the Villa 
Columbaria for many years back. He had made Mrs. 

aware of his presence in her room by a sensation 

of extreme cold, as if a wintry breeze were blowing 
over her ; also by a rustling of the bed-'curtains ; and, 
at such times, she had a certain consciousness, as she 
says, that she was not alone. Through Mr. Hume's 
agency, the ghost was enabled to explain himself, and 
declared that he was a monk, named Giannana, who 
died a very long time ago in Mrs. 's present bed- 
chamber. He was a murderer, and had been in a rest- 
less and miserable state ever since his death, wander- 
ing up and down the house, but especially haunting 
his own death-chamber and a staircase that communi- 
cated with the chapel of the villa. All the interviews 
with this lost spirit were attended with a sensation of 
severe cold, which was felt by every one present. He 
made his communications by means of table-rapping, 
and by the movements of chairs and other articles, 
which often assumed an angry character. The poor 
old fellow does not seem to have known exactly what 

he wanted with Mrs. , but promised to refrain 

from disturbing her any more, on condition that she 
would pray that he might find some repose. He had 
previously declined having any masses said for his 
soul. Eest, rest, rest, appears to be the continual 
craving of unhappy spirits ; they do not venture to 
ask for positive bliss : perhaps, in their utter weari- 
ness, would rather forego the trouble of active enjoy- 
ment, but pray only for rest. The cold atmosphere 



142 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

around this monk suggests new ideas as to the climate 
of Hades. If all the aforementioned twenty-seven 
monks had a similar one, the combined temperature 
must have been that of a polar winter. 

Mrs. saw, at one time, the fingers of her monk, 

long, yellow, and skinny; these fingers grasped the 
hands of individuals of the party, with a cold, clammy, 
and horrible touch. 

After the departure of this ghost other seances were 
held in her bedchamber, at which good and holy 
spirits manifested themselves, and behaved in a very 
comfortable and encouraging way. It was their be- 
nevolent purpose, apparently, to purify her apartments 
from all traces of the evil spirit, and to reconcile her 
to what had been so long the haunt of this miserable 
monk, by filling it with happy and sacred associations, 
in which, as Mrs. intimates, they entirely suc- 
ceeded. 

These stories remind me of an incident that took 
place at the old manse, in the first summer of our 



September 1 1th. — We walked yesterday to Florence, 
and visited the Church of St. Lorenzo, where we saw, 
for the second time, the famous Medici statues of 
Michael Angelo. I found myself not in a very appre- 
ciative state, and, being a stone myself, the statue of 
Lorenzo was at first little more to me than another 
stone ; but it was beginning to assume life, and would 
have impressed me as it did before if I had gazed long 
enough. There was a better light upon the face, un- 
der the helmet, than at my former visit, although 



J 858.] H'ALY. 143 

still the features were enough overshadowed to pro- 
duce that mystery on which, according to Mr. Powers, 
the effect of the statue depends. I observe that the 
costume of the figure, instead of being mediaeval, as I 
believe I have stated, is Roman ; but, be it what it 
may, the grand and simple character of the figure 
imbues the robes wit^i its individual propriety. I 
still think it the greatest miracle ever wrought in 
marble. 

We crossed the church and entered a cloister on 
the opposite side, in quest of the Laurentian Library. 
Ascending a staircase we found an old man blowing 
the bellows of the organ, which was in full blast in 
the church ; nevertheless he found time to direct us 
to the library door. We entered a lofty vestibule, of 
ancient aspect and stately architecture, and thence 
were admitted into the library itself ; a long and wide 
gallery or hall, lighted by a row of windows on which 
were painted the arms of the Medici. The ceiling 
was inlaid with dark wood, in an elaborate pattern, 
which was exactly repeated in terra-cotta on the pave- 
ment beneath our feet. Long desks, much like the 
old-fashioned ones in schools, were ranged on each 
side of the mid aisle, in a series from end to end, with 
seats for the convenience of students j and on these 
desks were rare manuscripts, carefully preserved under 
glass ; and books, fastened to the desks by iron chains, 
as the custom of studious antiquity used to be. Along 
the centre of the hall, between the two ranges of 
desks, were tables and chairs, at which two or three 
scholarly persons were seated, diligently consulting 



144 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

volumes in manuscript or old type. It was a very 
quiet place, imbued with a cloistered sanctity, and 
remote from all street-cries and rumble of the city, — 
odorous of old literature, — a spot where the common- 
est ideas ought not to be expressed in less than Latin. 
The librarian — or custode he ought rather to be 
termed, for he was a man not above the fee of a pauI 

— now presented himself, and showed us some of the 
literary curiosities ; a vellum manuscript of the Bible, 
with a splendid illumination by Ghirlandaio, covering 
two folio pages, and just as brilliant in its color as 
if finished yesterday. Other illuminated manuscripts 

— or at least separate pages of them, for the volumes 
were kept under glass, and not to be turned over — 
were shown us, very magnificent, but not to be com- 
pared with this of Ghirlandaio. Looking at such 
treasures I could almost say that we have left behind 
us more splendor than we have kept alike to our own 
age. We publish beautiful editions of books, to be 
sure, and thousands of people enjoy them; but in 
ancient times the expense that we spread thinly over 
a thousand volumes was all compressed into one, and 
it became a great jewel of a book, a heavy folio, 
worth its weight in gold. Then, what a spiritual 
charm it gives to a book to feel that every letter has 
been individually wrought, and the pictures glow for 
that individual page alone ! Certainly the ancient 
reader had a luxury which the modern one lacks. I 
was surprised, moreover, to see the clearness and 
accuracy of the chirography. Print does not surpass 
it in these respects. 



1858.] ITALY. 145 

The custode showed us an ancient manuscript of 
the Decameron ; Hkewise, a vohime containing the 
portraits of Petrarch and of Laura, each covering the 
whole of a vellum page, and very finely done. They 
are authentic portraits, no doubt, and Laura is de- 
picted as a fair-haired beauty, with a very satisfactory 
amount of loveliness. We saw some choice old editions 
of books in a small separate room ; but as these were 
all ranged in shut bookcases, and as each volume, 
moreover, was in a separate cover or modern binding, 
this exhibition did us very little good. By the by, 
there is a conceit struggling blindly in my mind 
about Petrarch and Laura, suggested by those two 
lifelike portraits, which have been sleeping cheek to 
cheek through all these centuries. But I cannot lay 
hold of it. 

September 2\st. — Yesterday morning the Vald'Arno 
was entirely filled with a thick fog, which extended 
even up to our windows, and concealed objects within 
a very short distance. It began to dissipate itself 
betimes, however, and was the forerunner of an 
unusually bright and warm day. We set out after 
breakfast and walked into town, where we looked at 
mosaic brooches. These are very pretty little bits of 
manufacture ; but there seems to have been no in- 
fusion of fresh fancy into the work, and the specimens 
present little variety. It is the characteristic com- 
modity of the place ; the central mart and manu- 
facturing locality being on the Ponte Vecchio, from 
end to end of which they are displayed in cases ; but 
there are other mosaic shops scattered about the 

VOL. II. 7 J 



146 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

town. The principal devices are roses, — pink, yellow, 
or white, — jasmines, lilies of the valley, forget-me-nots, 
orange blossoms, and others, single or in sprigs, or 
twined into wreaths ; parrots, too, and other birds 
of gay plumage, — often exquisitely done, and some- 
times with precious materials, such as lapis lazuli, 
malachite, and still rarer gems. Bracelets, with several 
different, yet relative designs, are often very beautiful. 
We find, at different shops, a great inequality of prices 
for mosaics that seemed to be of much the same 
quality. 

We went to the Uffizzi gallery, and found it much 
thronged with the middle and lower classes of Ital- 
ians ; and the English, too, seemed more numerous 
than I have lately seen them. Perhaps the tourists 
have just arrived here, starting at the close of the 
London season. We were amused with a pair of 
Englishmen who went through the gallery; one of 
them criticising the pictures and statues audibly, for 
the benefit of his companion. The critic I should 
take to be a country squire, and wholly un travelled ; 
a tall, well-built, rather rough, but gentlemanly man 
enough ; his friend, a small personage, exquisitely 
neat in dress, and of artificial deportment, every 
attitude and gesture appearing to have been practised 
before a glass. Being but a small pattern of a man, 
physically and intellectually, he had thought it worth 
while to finish himself oflf with the elaborateness of a 
Florentine mosaic; and the result was something 
like a dancing-master, though without the exuberant 
embroidery of such persons. Indeed, he was a very 



1858.] ITALY. 147 

quiet little man, and, though so thoroughly made up, 
there was something particularly green, fresh, and 
simple in him. Both these Englishmen were elderly, 
and the smaller one had perfectly white hair, glossy 
and silken. It did not make him in the least vener- 
able, however, but took his own character of neatness 
and prettiness. He carried his well-brushed and 
glossy hat in his hand in such a way as not to ruffle 
its surface ; and I wish I could put into one word or 
one sentence the pettiness, the minikin-finical effect 
of this little man ; his self-consciousness so lifelong, 
that, in some sort, he forgot himself even in the midst 
of it ; his propriety, his cleanliness and unruffledness ; 
his prettiness and nicety of manifestation, like a bird 
hopping daintily about. 

His companion, as I said, was of a completely 
different type ; a tall, gray-haired man, with the 
rough English face, a little tinted with port wine; 
careless, natural manner, betokening a man of posi- 
tion in his own neighborhood ; a loud voice, not vul- 
gar, nor outraging the rules of society, but betraying 
a character incapable of much refinement. He talked 
continually in his progress through the gallery, and 
audibly enough for us to catch almost everything he 
said, at many yards' distance. His remarks and criti- 
cisms, addressed to his small friend, were so entertain- 
ing, that we strolled behmd him for the sake of being 
benefited by them ; and I think he soon became 
aware of this, and addressed himself to us as well as 
to his more immediate friend. Nobody but an Eng- 
lishman, it seems to me, has just this kind of vanity, — 



148 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

a feeling mixed up with scorn and good-nature ; self- 
complacency on his own merits, and as an English- 
man ; pride at being in foreign parts ; contempt for 
everybody around him ; a rough kindliness towards 
people in general. I liked the man, and should be 
glad to know him better. As for his criticism, I am 
sorry to remember only one. It was upon the pic- 
ture of the Nativity, by Correggio, in the Tribune, 
where the mother is kneeling before the Child, and 
adoring it in an awful rapture, because she sees the 
eternal God in its baby face and figure. The English- 
man was highly delighted with this picture, and began 
to gesticulate, as if dandling a baby, and to make a 
chirruping sound. It was to him merely a represen- 
tation of a mother fondling her infant. He then said, 
*' If I could have my choice of the pictures and stat- 
ues in the Tribune, I would take this picture, and 
that one yonder " (it was a good enough Enthronement 
of the Virgin by Andrea del Sarto) " and the Dancing 
Faun, and let the rest go." A delightful man ; I love 
that wholesome coarseness of mind and heart, which 
no education nor opportunity can polish out of the 
genuine Englishman ; a coarseness without vulgarity. 
When a Yankee is coarse, he is pretty sure to be vul- 
gar too. 

The two critics seemed to be considering whether 
it were practicable to go from the Uffizzi to the Pitti 
gallery; but "it confuses one," remarked the little 
man, "to see more than one gallery in a day." (I 
should think so, — the Pitti Palace tumbling into 
his small receptacle on the top of the Uffizzi.) " It 



1858.] ITALY. 140 

does so," responded the big man, with heav}^ em- 
phasis. 

September 23d. — The vintage has been going on in 
our podere for about a week, and I saw a part of the 
process of making wine, under one of our back win- 
dows. It was on a very small scale, the grapes being 
thrown into a barrel, and crushed with a sort of 
pestle ; and as each estate seems to make its own 
wine, there are probably no very extensive and elabo- 
rate appliances in general use for the manufacture. 
The cider-making of New England is far more pictur- 
esque ; the gTeat heap of golden or rosy apples under 
the trees, and the cider-mill worked by a circumgyra- 
tory horse, and all ngush with sweet juice. Indeed, 
nothing connected with the grape-culture and the 
vintage here has been picturesque, except the large 
inverted pyramids in which the clusters hang ; those 
great bunches, white or purple, really satisfy my idea 
both as to aspect and taste. We can buy a large bas- 
ketful for less than a paul ; and they are the only 
things that one can never devour too much of — and 
there is no enough short of a little too much — with- 
out subsequent repentance. It is a shame to turn 
such delicious juice into such sour wine as they make 
in Tuscany. I tasted a sip or two of a flask which 
the contadini sent us for trial, — the rich result of the 
process I had witnessed in the barrel. It took me al- . 
together by surprise ; for I remembered the nectare- 
ousness of the new cider, which I used to sip through 
a straw in my boyhood, and I uever doubted that this 
would be as dulcet, but finer and more ethereal; as 



150 FRENCH- AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

much more delectable, in short, as these grapes are 
better than puckery cider apples. Positively, I never 
tasted anything so detestable, such a sour and bitter 
juice, still lukewarm with fermentation : it was a waiZ 
of woe, squeezed out of the wine-press of tribulation, 
and the more a man drinks of such, the sorrier he will 
be. 

Besides grapes, we have had figs, and I have now 
learned to be very fond of them. When they first 
began to appear, two months ago, they had scarcely 
any sweetness, and tasted very like a decaying squash : 
this was an early variety, with purple skins. There 
are many kinds of figs, the best being green-skinned, 
growing yellower as they ripen; and the riper they 
are, the more the sweetness within them intensifies, 
till they resemble dried figs in everything, except that 
they retain the fresh fruit-flavor ; rich, luscious, yet 
not palling. We have had pears, too, some of them 
very tolerable ; and peaches, which look magnificently, 
as regards size and downy blush, but have seldom 
much more taste than a cucumber. A succession of 
fruits has followed us, ever since our arrival in Flor- 
ence ; — first, and for a long time, abundance of 
cherries ; then apricots, which lasted many weeks, till 
we were weary of them ; then plums, pears, and finally 
figs, peaches, and grapes. Except the figs and grapes, 
^a New England summer and autumn would give us 
better fruit than any we have found in Italy. 

Italy beats us, I think, in mosquitoes ; they are 
horribly pungent little satanic particles. They pos- 
sess strange intelligence, and exquisite acuteness of 



1858.] ITALY. 151 

sight and smell, — prodigious audacity and courage to 
match it, insomuch that they venture on the most 
hazardous attacks, and get safe off. One of them flew 
into my mouth, the other night, and stung me far 
down in my throat ; but luckily I coughed him up in 
halves. They are bigger than American mosquitoes ; 
and 'if you crush them, after one of their feasts, it 
makes a terrific blood-spot. It is a sort of suicide — 
at least, a shedding of one's own blood — to kill 
them ; but it gratifies the old Adam to do it. It 
shocks me to feel how revengeful I am; but it is 
impossible not to impute a certain malice and intel- 
lectual venom to these diabolical insects. I wonder 
whether our health, at this season of the year, requires 
that we should be kept in a state of irritation, and 
so the mosquitoes are Nature's prophetic remedy for 
some disease ; or whether we are made for the mos- 
quitoes, not they for us. It is possible, just possible, 
that the infinitesimal doses of poison which they 
infuse into us are a homoeopathic safeguard against 
pestilence ; but medicine never was administered in a 
more disagreeable way. 

The moist atmosphere about the Arno, I suppose, 
produces these insects, and fills the broad, ten-mile 
valley with them ; and as we are just on the brim of 
the basin, they overflow into our windows. 

September 25th. — U- and I walked to town yes- 
terday morning, and went to the Uffizzi gallery. It 
is not a pleasant thought that we are so soon to give 
up this gallery, with little prospect (none, or hardly 
any* on my part) of ever seeing it again. It interests 



152 FKENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l853. 

me and all of us far more than the gallery of the 
Pitti Palace, wherefore I know not, for the latter is 
the richer of the two in admirable pictures. Perhaps 
it is the picturesque variety of the Uffizzi — the com- 
bination of painting, sculpture, gems, and bronzes — 
that makes the charm. The Tribune, too, is the richest 
room in all the world ; a heart that draws all hearts 
to it. The Dutch pictures, moreover, give a homely, 
human interest to the Uffizzi ; and I really think that 
the frequency of Andrea del Sarto's productions at the 
Pitti Palace — looking so very like masterpieces, yet 
lacking the soul of art and nature — have much to do 
with the weariness that comes from better acquaintance 
with the latter gallery. The splendor of the gilded 
and frescoed saloons is perhaps another bore ; but, 
after all, my memory will often tread there as long as 
I live. What shall we do in America 1 

Speaking of Dutch pictures, I was much struck 
3^esterday, as frequently before, with a small picture 
by Teniers the elder. It seems to be a pawnbroker 
in the midst of his pledges ; old earthen jugs, flasks, 
a brass kettle, old books, and a huge pile of worn-out 
and broken rubbish, which he is examining. These 
things are represented with vast fidelity, yet with 
bold and free touches, unlike the minute, microscopic 
work of other Dutch masters ; and a wonderful pic- 
turesqueness is wrought out of these humble materials, 
and even the figure and head of the pawnbroker have 
a strange grandeur. 

We spent no very long time at the Uffizzi, and 
afterwards crossed the Ponte alle Grazie, and went to 



1858.] ITALY. 153 

the convent of San Miniato, which stands on a hill out- 
side of the Porta San Gallo. A paved pathway, along 
which stands crosses marking stations at which pil- 
grims are to kneel and pray, goes steeply to the hill- 
top, where, in the first place, is a smaller church and 
convent than those of San Miniato. The latter are 
seen at a short distance to the right, the convent 
being a large, square battlemented mass, adjoining 
which is the church, showing a front of aged white 
marble, streaked with black, and having an old stone 
tower behind. I have seen no other convent or 
monastery that so well corresponds with my idea of 
what such structures were. The sacred precincts are 
enclosed by a high wall, gray, ancient, and luxii- 
riously ivy-grown, and lofty and strong enough for 
the rampart of a fortress. We went through the 
gateway and entered the church, which we found in 
much disarray, and masons at work upon the pave- 
ment. The tribune is elevated considerably above 
the nave, and accessible by marble staircases ; there 
are great arches and a chapel, with curious monu- 
ments in the Gothic style, and ancient carvings and 
mosaic works, and, in short, a dim, dusty, and vener- 
able interior, well worth studying in detail 

The view of Florence from the church door is very 
fine, and seems to include every tower, dome, or 
whatever object emerges out of the general mass. 

September 2Sth. — I went to the Pitti Palace yester- 
day, and to the Uffizzi to-day, paying them probably 
my last visit, yet cherishing an unreasonable doubt 
whether I may not see them again. At all events, I 
7* 



154 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

have seen them enough for the present, even what is 
best of them; and, at the same time, with a sad 
reluctance to bid them farewell forever, I experience 
an utter weariness of Raphael's old canvas, and of the 
time-yellowed marble of the Venus di Medici. When 
the material embodiment presents itself outermost, 
and we perceive them only by the grosser sense, miss- 
ing their ethereal spirit, there is nothing so heavily 
burdensome as masterpieces of painting and sculpture. 
I threw my farewell glance at the Venus di Medici to- 
day with strange insensibility. 

The nights are wonderfully beautiful now. When 
the moon was at the full, a few nights ago, its light 
was an absolute glory, such as I seem only to have 
dreamed of heretofore, and that only in my younger 
days. At its rising I have fancied that the orb of the 
moon has a kind of purple brightness, and that this 
tinge is communicated to its radiance until it has 
climbed high aloft and sheds a flood of white over hill 
and valley. Now that the moon is on the wane, there 
is a gentler lustre, but still bright ; and it makes the 
Val d' Arno with its surrounding hills, and its soft 
mist in the distance, as beautiful a scene as exists 
anywhere out of heaven. And the morning is quite 
as beautiful in its own way. This mist, of which I 
have so often spoken, sets it beyond the limits of 
actual sense and makes it ideal ; it is as if you were 
dreaming about the valley, — as if the valley itself 
were dreaming, and met you half-way in your own 
dream. If the mist were to be withdrawn, I believe 
the whole beauty of the valley would go with it. 



1858.] ITALY. 155 

Until pretty late in the morning we have the comet 
streaming through the sky, and dragging its intermi- 
nable tail among the stars. It keeps brightening from 
night to night, and I should think must blaze fiercely 
enough to cast a shadow by and by. I know not 
whether it be in the vicinity of Galileo's tower, and in 
the influence of his spirit, but I have hardly ever 
watched the stars with such interest as now. 

September 2^th. — Last evening I met Mr. Powers 
at Miss Blagden's, and he talked about his treatment 
by our government in reference to an appropriation 
of twenty-five thousand dollars made by Congress for 
a statue by him. Its payment and the purchase of 
the statue were left at the option of the President, 
and he conceived himself wronged because the affair 

was never concluded As for the President, he 

knows nothing of art, and probably acted in the mat- 
ter by the advice of the director of public works. No 
doubt a sculptor gets commissions as everybody gets 
public employment and emolument of whatever kind 
from our government, not by merit or fitness, but by 
political influence skilfully applied. As Powers him- 
self observed, the ruins of our Capitol are not likely 
to afford sculptures equal to those which Lord Elgin 
took from the Parthenon, if this be the system under 

which they are produced I wish our great 

Republic had the spirit to do as much, according to 
its vast means, as Florence did for sculpture and archi- 
tecture when it was a republic ; but we have the 
meanest government and the shabbiest, and — if 
truly represented by it — we are the meanest and 



156 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

shabbiest people known in history. And yet the less 
we attempt to do for art the better, if our future at- 
tempts are to have no better result than such brazen 
troopers as the equestrian statue of General Jackson, 
or even such naked respectabilities as Greenough's 
Washington. There is something false and affected 
in our highest taste for art ; and I suppose, further- 
more, we are the only people who seek to decorate 
their public institutions, not by the highest taste 
among them, but by the average at best. 

There was also at Miss Blagden's, among other 
company, Mr. , an artist in Florence, and a sen- 
sible man. I talked with him about Hume, the 
medium, whom he had many opportunities of observ- 
ing when the latter was in these parts. -Mr. 

says that Hume is unquestionably a knave, but that 
he himself is as much perplexed at his own preter- 
natural performances as any other person; he is 
startled and affrighted at the phenomena which he 
produces. Nevertheless, when his spiritual powers 
fall short, he does his best to eke them out with im- 
posture. This moral infirmity is a part of his nature, 
and I suggested that perhaps if he were of a firmer 
and healthier moral make, if his character were suf- 
ficiently sound and dense to be capable of steadfast 
principle, he would not have possessed the impressi- 
bility that fits him for the so-called spiritual influences. 

Mr. says that Louis Napoleon is literally one of 

the most skilful jugglers in the world, and that prob- 
ably the interest he has taken in Mr. Hume was caused 
partly by a wish to acquire his art. 



1858.] ITALY. 157 

This morning Mr. Powers invited me to go with 
him to the Grand Duke's new fomidry, to see the 
bronze statue of Webster which has just been cast 
from his model. It is the second cast of the statue, 
the first having been shipped some months ago on 
board of a vessel which was lost; and as Powers 
observed, the statue now lies at the bottom of the 
Atlantic Ocean somewhere in the vicinity of the tele- 
graphic cable. 

We were received with much courtesy and em- 
phasis by the director of the foundry, and conducted 
into a large room walled with bare, new brick, where 
the statue was standing in front of the extinct fur- 
nace : a majestic Webster indeed, eight feet high, 
and looking even more colossal than that. The like- 
ness seemed to me perfect, and, like a sensible man, 
Powers has dressed him in his natural costume, such 
as I have seen Webster have on while making a 
speech in the open air at a mass meeting in Concord, 
— dress-coat buttoned pretty closely across the breast, 
pantaloons and boots, — everything finished even to a 
seam and a stitch. Not an inch of the statue but is 
Webster; even his coat-tails are imbued with the 
man, and this true artist has succeeded in showing 
him through the broadcloth as nature showed him. 
He has felt that a man's actual clothes are as much 
a part of him as his flesh, and I respect him for dis- 
daining to shirk the difficulty by throwing the mean- 
ness of a cloak over it, and for recognizing the folly 
of masquerading our Yankee statesman in a Roman 
toga, and the indecorousness of presenting him as u 



158 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

brassy nudity. It would have been quite as unjusti- 
fiable to strip him to his skeleton as to his flesh. 
Webster is represented as holding in his right hand 
the written roll of the Constitution, with which he 
points to a bundle of fasces, which he keeps from 
falling by the grasp of his left, thus symbolizing him 
as the preserver of the Union. There is an expression 
of quiet, solid, massive strength in the whole figure ; 
a deep pervading energy, in which any exaggeration 
of gesture would lessen and lower the effect. He 
looks really like a pillar of the state. The face is 
very grand, veiy Webster; stern and awful, because 
he is in the act of meeting a great crisis, and yet with 
the warmth of a great heart glowing through it. 
Happy is Webster to have been so truly and ade- 
quately sculptured; happy the sculptor in such a 
subject, which no idealization of a demigod could have 
supplied him with. Perhaps the statue at the bottom 
of the sea will be cast up in some future age, when 
the present race of man is forgotten, and if so, that 
far posterity will look up to us as a grander race than 
we find ourselves to be. Neither was Webster alto- 
gether the man he looked. His physique helped him 
out, even when he fell somewhat short of its promise ; 
and if his eyes had not been in such deep caverns 
their fire would not have looked so bright. 

Powers made me observe how the surface of the 
statue was wrought to a sort of roughness instead of 
being smoothed, as is the practice of other artists. 
He said that this had cost him great pains, and cer- 
tainly it has an excellent effect. The statue is to go 



1858.] ITALY. 159 

to Boston, and I hope will be placed in the open air, 
for it is too mighty to be kept under any roof that 
now exists in America 

After seeing this, the director showed us some very 
curious and exquisite specimens of castings, such as 
baskets of flowers, in which the most delicate and 
fragile blossoms, the curl of a petal, the finest veins 
in a leaf, the lightest flower-spray that ever quivered 
in a breeze, were perfectly preserved ; and the basket 
contained an abundant heap of such sprays. There 
were likewise a pair of hands, taken actually from 
life, clasped together as they were, and they looked 
like parts of a man who had been changed suddenly 
from flesh to brass. They were worn and rough 
and unhandsome hands, and so very real, with all 
their veins and the pores of the skin, that it was 
shocking to look at them. A bronze leaf, cast also 
from the life, was as curious and more beautiful. 

Taking leave of Powers, I went hither and thither 
about Florence, seeing for the last time things that 
I have seen many times before : the market, for in- 
stance, blocking up a line of narrow streets with fruit- 
stalls, and obstreperous dealers crying their peaches, 
their green lemons, their figs, their delicious grapes, 
their mushrooms, their pomegranates, their radishes, 
their lettuces. They use one vegetable here which 
I have not known so used elsewhere ; that is, very 
young pumpkins or squashes, of the size of apples, 
and to be cooked by boiling. They are not to my 
taste, but the people here like unripe things, — unripe 
fruit, unripe chickens, unripe lamb. This market is the 



160 FKENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

noisiest and swarmiest centre of noisy and swarming 
Florence, and I always like to pass through it on that 
account. 

I went also to Santa Croce, and it seemed to me 
to present a longer vista and broader space than 
almost any other church, perhaps because the pillars 
between the nave and aisles are not so massive as to 
obstruct the view. I looked into the Duomo, too, 
and was pretty well content to leave it. Then I 
came homeward, and lost my way, and wandered far 
off through the white sunshine, and the scanty shade 
of the vineyard walls, and the oUve-trees that here 
and there branched over them. At last I saw our 
own gray battlements at a distance, on one side, quite 
out of the direction in which I was travelling, so was 
compelled to the grievous mortification of retracing a 
great many of ray weary footsteps. It was a very hot 
day. This evening I have been on the tower-top 
star-gazing, and looking at the comet, which waves 
along the sky like an immense feather of flame. Over 
Florence there was an illuminated atmosphere, caused 
by the lights of the city gleaming upward into the 
mists which sleep and dream above that portion of 
the valley, as well as the rest of it. I saw dimly, or 
fancied I saw, the hill of Fiesole on the other side of 
Florence, and remembered how ghostly lights were 
seen passing thence to the Duomo on the night when 
Lorenzo the Magnificent died. From time to time the 
sweet bells of Florence rung out, and I was loath to 
come down into the lower world, knowing that I shall 
never again look heavenward from an old tower-top in 



1858.] ITALY. IGl 

such a soft calm evening as this. Yet I am not loath 
to go away ; imj^atient rather ; for, taking no root, I 
soon weary of any soil in which I may be temporarily 
deposited. The same impatience I sometimes feel or 
conceive of as regards this earthly life 

I forgot to mention that Powers showed me, in his 
studio, the model of the statue of America, which he 
wished the government to buy. It has great merit, 
and embodies the ideal of j^outh, freedom, progress, 
and whatever we consider as distinctive of our coun- 
try's character and destiny. It is a female figure, 
vigorous, beautiful, planting its foot lightly on a 
broken chain, and pointing upward. The face has a 
high look of intelligence and lofty feeling ; the form, 
nude to the middle, has all the charms of woman- 
hood, and is thus warmed and redeemed out of the 
cold allegoric sisterhood who have general^ no merit 
in chastity, being really without sex. I somewhat 
question whether it is quite the thing, however, to 
make a genuine woman out of an allegory : we ask, 
Who is to wed this lovely virgin 1 and we are not sat- 
isfied to banish her into the realm of chilly thought. 
But I liked the statue, and all the better for what I 
criticise, and was sorry to see the huge package in 
which the finished marble lies bundled up, ready to 
be sent to our country, — which does not call for it. 

Mr. Powers and his two daughters called to take 
leave of us, and at parting I expressed a hope of seeing 
him in America. He said that it would make him 
very unhappy to believe that he should never return 
thither ; but it seems to me that he has no such 

K 



162 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

definite purpose of return as would be certain to bring 
itself to pass. It makes a very unsatisfactory life, 
thus to spend the greater part of it in exile. In such 
a case we are always deferring the reality of life till a 
future moment, and, by and by, we have deferred it 
till there are no future moments ; or, if we do go back, 
we find that life has shifted whatever of reality it had 
to the country where we deemed ourselves only living 
temporarily ; and so between two stools we come to 
the ground, and make ourselves a part of one or the 
other country only by laying our bones in its soil. It 
is particularly a pity in Powers's case, because he is so 
very American in character, and the only convenience 
for him of his Italian residence is, that here he can 
supply himself with marble, and with workmen to 
chisel it according to his designs. 



SIENA. 

October 2d. — Yesterday morning, at six o'clock, 
we left our ancient tower, and threw a parting glance 
— and a rather sad one — over the misty Val d' Arno. 
This summer will look like a happy one in our chil- 
dren's retrospect, and also, no doubt, in the years 
that remain to ourselves ; and, in truth, I have found 
it a peaceful and not uncheerful one. 

It was not a pleasant morning, and Monte Morello, 
looking down on Florence, had on its cap, betokening 
foul weather, according to the proverb. Crossing the 
suspension-bridge, we reached the Leopoldo railway 
"without entering the city. By some mistake, — or 



1858.] ITALY. 16^ 

perhaps because nobody ever travels by first-class car- 
riages in Tuscany, — we found we had received second- 
class tickei^s, and were put into a long, crowded 
carriage, full of priests, military men, commercial trav- 
ellers, and other respectable people, facing one another 
lengthwise along the carriage, and many of them 
smoking cigars. They were all perfectly civil, and I 
think I must own that the manners of this second- 
class would compare favorably with those of an Ameri- 
can first-class one. 

At Empoli, about an hour after we started, we had 
to change carriages, the main train proceeding to Leg- 
horn My observations along the road were 

very scanty : a hilly country, with several old towns 
seated on the most elevated hill-tops, as is common 
throughout Tuscany, or sometimes a fortress with a 
town on the plain at its base ; or,* once or twice, the 
towers and battlements of a mediseval castle, com- 
manding the pass below it. Near Florence the coun- 
try was fertile in the vine and olive, and looked as un- 
picturesque as that sort of fertility usually makes it ; 
not but what I have come to think better of the 
tint of the olive-leaf than when I first saw it. In the 
latter part of our journey I remember a wild stream, 
of a greenish hue, but transparent, rushing along over 
a rough bed, and before reaching Siena we rumbled 
into a long tunnel, and emerged from it near the 
city 

We drove up hill and down (for the surface of Siena 
eeems to be nothing but an irregularity) through nar- 
row old streets, and were set down at the Aquila 



164 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

Neva, a grim-looking albergo near the centre of the 

town. Mrs. S had already taken rooms for us 

there, and to these we were now ushered up the 
highway of a dingy stone staircase, and into a small, 
brick-paved parlor. The house seemed endlessly 
old, and all the glimpses that we caught of Siena 
out of window seemed more ancient still. Almost 
within arm's reach, across a narrow street, a tall 
palace of gray, time-worn stone clambered skyward, 
with arched windows, and square windows, and large 
windows and small, scattered up and down its side. 
It is the Palazzo Tolomei, and looks immensely 
venerable. From the windows of our bedrooms we 
looked into a broader street, though still not very 
wide, and into a small piazza, the most conspicuous 
object in which was a column, bearing on its top a 
bronze wolf suckling Romulus and Eemus. This 
symbol is repeated in other parts of the city, and 
seems to indicate that the Sienese people pride them- 
selves in a Roman origin. In another direction, over 
the tops of the houses, we saw a very high tower, 
with battlements projecting around its summit, so 
that it was a fortress in the air ; and this I have since 
found to be the Palazzo Publico. It w^as pleasant, 
looking downward into the little old piazza and 
narrow streets, to see the swarm of life on the pave- 
ment, the life of to-day just as new as if it had never 
been lived before ; the citizens, the priests, the sol- 
diers, the mules and asses with their panniers, the 
diligence lumbering along, with a postilion in a faded 
crimson coat bobbing up and down on the off-horse. 



1858.] ITALY. 1G5 

Such a bustling scene, vociferous, too, with various 
street-cries, is wonderfully set off by the gray an- 
tiquity of the town, and makes the town look older 
than if it were a solitude. 

Soon Mr. and Mrs. Story came, and accompanied 
us to look for lodgings. They also drove us about 
the city in their carriage, and showed us the outside 
of the Palazzo Publico, and of the Cathedral and other 
remarkable edifices. The aspect of Siena is far more 
picturesque than that of any other town in Italy, so 
far as I know Italian towns ; and yet, now that I 
have written it, I remember Perugia, and feel that 
the observation is a mistake. But at any rate Siena 
is remarkably picturesque, standing on such a site, 
on the verge and within the crater of an extinct vol- 
cano, and therefore being as uneven as the sea in a 
tempest ; the streets so narrow, ascending between 
tall, ancient palaces, while the side streets rush head- 
long down, only to be threaded by sure-footed mules, 
such as climb Alpine heights ; old stone balconies on 
the palace fronts ; old arched doorways, and windows 
set in frames of Gothic architecture ; arcades, resem- 
bling canopies of stone, with quaintly sculptured 
statues in the richly wrought Gothic niches of each 
pillar ; — everything massive and lofty, yet minutely 
interesting when you look at it stone by stone. The 
Florentines, and the Romans too, have obliterated, 
as far as they could, all the interest of their mediaeval 
structures by covering them with stucco, so that they 
have quite lost th^ir character, and affect the spectator 
with no reverential idea of age. Here the city is all 



166 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

overwritten with black-letter, and the glad Italian 
sun makes the effect so much the stronger. 

We took a lodging, and afterwards J and I 

rambled about, and went into the Cathedral for a 
moment, and strayed also into the Piazza del Campo, 
the great public square of Siena. I am not in the 
mood for further description of public places now, so 
shall say a word or two about the old palace in 
which we have established ourselves. We have the 
second piano, and dwell amid faded grandeur, having 
for our saloon what seems to have been a ball-room. 
It is ornamented with a great fresco in the centre of 
the vaulted ceiling, and others covering the sides of 
the apartment, and surrounded with arabesque frame- 
works, where Cupids gambol and chase one another. 
The subjects of the frescos I cannot make out, not 
that they are faded like Giotto's, for they are as fresh 
as roses, and are done in an exceedingly workman- 
like style ; but they are allegories of Fame and Plenty 
and other matters, such as I could never understand. 
Our whole accommodation is in similar style, — 
spacious, magnificent, and mouldy. 

In the evening Miss S — — and I drove to the rail- 
way, and on the arrival of the train from Florence we 
watched with much eagerness the unlading of the 
luggage-van. At last the whole of our ten trunks 
and tin bandbox were produced, and finally my 
leather bag, in which was my journal and a manu- 
script book containing my sketch of a romance. It 
gladdened my very heart to see it,, and I shall think 
the better of Tuscan promptitude and accuracy for so 



1858.] ITALY. 167 

quickly bringing it back to me. (It was left behind, 
under one of the rail carriage seats.) We find all the 
public officials, whether of railway, police, or custom- 
house, extremely courteous and pleasant to encounter ; 
they seem willing to take trouble and reluctant to 
give it, and it is really a gratification to find that 
such civil people will sometimes oblige you by taking 
a paul or two aside. 

October Zd. — I took several strolls about the city 
yesterday, and find it scarcely 'extensive enough to 
get lost in ; and if we go far from the centre we soon 
come to silent streets, with only here and there an 
individual ; and the inhabitants stare from their doors 
and windows at the stranger, and turn round to look 
at him after he has passed. The interest of the old 
town would soon be exhausted for the traveller, but I 
can conceive that a thoughtful and shy man might 
settle down here with the view of making the place a 
home, and spend many years in a sombre kind of hap- 
piness. I should prefer it to Florence as a residence, 
but it would be terrible without an independent life 
in one's own mind. 

U and I walked out in the afternoon, and went 

into the Piazza del Campo, the principal place of the 
city, and a very noble and peculiar one. It is much 
in the form of an amphitheatre, and the surface of the 
ground seems to be slightly scooped out, so that it 
resembles the shallow basin of a shell. It is thus a 
much better sight for an assemblage of the populace 
than if it were a perfect level. A semicircle or trun- 
cated ellipse of stately and ancient edifices surround 



168 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858- 

the piazza, with arches opening beneath them, through 
which streets converge hitherward. One side of the 
piazza is a straight Une, and is occupied by the 
Palazzo Publico, which is a most noble and impres- 
sive Gothic structure. It has not the mass of the 
Palazzo Vecchio at Florence, but is more striking. It 
has a long battlemented front, the central part of 
which rises eminent above the rest, in a great square 
bulk, which is likewise crowned with battlements. 
This is much more picturesque than the one great 
block of stone into which the Palazzo Vecchio is con- 
solidated. At one extremity of this long front of the 
Palazzo Publico rises a tower, shooting up its shaft 
high, high into the air, and bulging out there into a 
battlemented fortress, within which the tower, slen- 
derer than before, climbs to a still higher region. I 
do not know whether the summit of the tower is 
higher or so high as that of the Palazzo Vecchio ; but 
the length of the shaft, free of the edifice, is much 
greater, and so produces the more elevating effect. 
The whole front of the Palazzo Publico is exceedingly 
venerable, with arched windows, Gothic carvings, and 
all the old-time ornaments that betoken it to have 
stood a great while, and the gray strength that will 
hold it up at least as much longer. At one end of 
the facade, beneath the shadow of the tower, is a 
grand and beautiful porch, supported on square pillars, 
within each of which is a niche containing a statue of 
mediaeval sculpture. 

The great Piazza del Campo is the market-place of 
Siena. In the morning it was thronged with booths 



1858.] ITALY. 169 

and stalls, especially of fruit and vegetable dealers ; 
but as in Florence, they melted away in the sunshine, 
gradually withdrawing themselves into the shadow 
thrown from the Palazzo Publico. 

On the side opposite the palace is an antique foun- 
tain of marble, ornamented with two statues and a 
series of bas-reliefs ; and it was so much admired in 
its day that its sculptor received the name '• Del 
Fonte." I am loath to leave the piazza and palace 
without finding some word or two to suggest their 
antique majesty, in the sunshine and the shadow; 
and how fit it seemed, notwithstanding their vener- 
ableness, that there should be a busy crowd filling up 
the great, hollow amphitheatre, and crying their fruit 
and little merchandises, so that all the curved line of 
stately old edifices helped to reverberate the noise. 
The life of to-dsij, within the shell of a time past, is 
wonderfully fascinating. 

Another point to which a stranger's footsteps are 
drawn by a kind of magnetism, so that he will be apt 
to find himself there as often as he strolls out of his 
hotel, is the Cathedral. It stands in the highest part 
of the city, and almost every street runs into some 
other street which meanders hitherward. On our way 

thither, U and I came to a beautiful front of 

black and white marble, in somewhat the same style 
as the Cathedral ; in fact, it was the baptistery, and 
should have made a part of it, according to the origi- 
nal design, which contemplated a structure of vastly 
greater extent than this actual one. We entered the 
baptistery, and found the interior small, but very rich 

VOL. u. 8 



170 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

in its clustered columns and intersecting arches, and 
its frescos, pictures, statues, and ornaments. More- 
over, a father and mother had brought their baby to 
be baptized, and the poor little thing, in its gay swad- 
dling-clothes, looked just like what I have seen in old 
pictures, and a good deal like an Indian pappoose. It 
gave one little slender squeak when the priest put the 
water on its forehead, and then was quiet again. 

We now went round to the faQade of the Cathedral. 
.... It is of black and white marble, with, I believe, 
an intermixture of red and other colors ; but time has 
toned them down, so that white, black, and red do not 
contrast so strongly with one another as they may 
have done five hundred years ago. The architecture 
is generally of the pointed Gothic style, but there are 
likewise carved arches over the doors and windows, 
and a variety which does not produce the effect of 
confusion, — a magnificent eccentricity, an exuberant 
imagination flowering out in stone. On high, in the 
great peak of the front, and throwing its colored 
radiance into the nave within, there is a round window 
of immense circumference, the painted figures in which 
we can see dimly from the outside. But what I wish 
to express, and never can, is the multitudinous richness 
of the ornamentation of the front ; the arches within 
arches, sculptured inch by inch, of the deep doorways; 
the statues of saints, some making a hermitage of a 
niche, others standing forth ; the scores of busts, that 
look like faces of ancient people gazing down out of 
the Cathedral ; the projecting shapes of stone lions, — 
the thousand forms of Gothic fancy, which seemed to 



1858.] ITALY. 171 

soften the marble and express whatever it liked, and 
allow it to harden again to last forever. But my 
description seems like knocking off the noses of some 
of the busts, the fingers and toes of the statues, the 
projecting points of the architecture, jumbling them 
all up together, and flinging them down upon the page. 
This gives no idea of the truth, nor, least of all, can it 
shadow forth that solemn whole, mightily combined 
out of all these minute particulars, and sanctifying the 
entire space of ground over which this cathedral-front 
flings its shadow, or on which it reflects the sun. A 
majesty and a minuteness, neither interfering with the 
other, each assisting the other ; this is what I love in 
Gothic architecture. We went in and walked about ; 
but I mean to go again before sketching the interior 
in my poor water-colors. 

October Uh. — On looking again at the Palazzo 
Publico, I see that the pillared portal which I have 
spoken of does not cover an entrance to the palace, 
but is a chapel, with an altar, and frescos above it. 
Bouquets of fresh flowers are on the altar, and a lamp 
burns, in all the daylight, before the crucifix. The 
chapel is quite unenclosed, except by an openwork 
balustrade of marble, on which the carving looks very 
ancient. Nothing could be more convenient for the 
devotions of the crowd in the piazza, and no doubt the 
daily prayers offered at the shrine might be numbered 
by the thousand, — brief, but I hope earnest, — like 
those glimpses I used to catch at the blue sky, reveal- 
ing so much in an instant, while I was toiling at Brook 
Farm. Another picturesque thing about the Palazzo 



172 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

Publico is a great stone balcony quaintly wrought, 
about midway in the front and high aloft, with two 
arched windows opening into it. 

After another glimpse at the Cathedral, too, I 
realize how utterly I have failed in conveying the 
idea of its elaborate ornament, its twisted and clus- 
tered pillars, and numberless devices of sculpture ; 
nor did I mention the venerable statues that stand 
all round the summit of the edifice, relieved against 
the sky, — the highest of all being one of the Saviour, 
on the topmost peak of the front ; nor the tall tower 
that ascends from one side of the building, and is 
built of layers of black and white marble piled one 
upon another in regular succession; nor the dome 
that swells upward close beside this tower. 

Had the Cathedral been constructed on the plan 
and dimensions at first contemplated, it would have 
been incomparably majestic; the finished portion, 
grand as it is, being only what was intended for a 
transept. One of the walls of what was to have been 
the nave is still standing, and looks like a ruin, 
though, I believe, it has been turned to account as 
the wall of a palace, the space of the never-completed 
nave being now a court or street. 

The whole family of us were kindly taken out yes- 
terday, to dine and spend the day at the Villa Belve- 
dere with our friends Mr. and Mrs. Story. The 
vicinity of Siena is much more agreeable than that 
of Florence, being cooler, breezier, with more foliage 
and shrubbery both near at hand and in the distance ; 
and the prospect, Mr. Story told us, embraces a 



1858.] ITALY. 



173 



diameter of about a hundred miles between hills 
north and south. The Villa Belvedere was built and 
owned by an Englishman now deceased, who has 
left it to his butler, and its lawns and shrubbery 
have something English in their character, and there 
was almost a damjDness in the grass, which really 
pleased me in this parched Italy. Within the house 
the walls are hung with fine old-fashioned engrav- 
ings from the pictures of Gainsborough, West, and 
other English painters. The Englishman, though 
he had chosen to live and die in Italy, had evidently 
brought his native tastes and peculiarities along with 
him. Mr. Story thinks of buying this villa : I do not 
know but I might be tempted to buy it myself if 
Siena w^ere a practicable residence for the entire 
year ; but the winter here, with the bleak mountain- 
winds of a hundred miles round about blustering 
against it, must be terribly disagreeable. 

We spent a very pleasant day, turning over books 
or talking on the lawn, whence we could behold 
scenes picturesque afar, and rich vineyard glimpses 
near at hand. Mr. Story is the most variously ac- 
complished and brilliant person, the fullest of social 
life and fire, whom I ever met ; and without seeming 
to make an effort, he kept us amused and entertained 
the whole day long ; not wearisomely entertained 
neither, as we shoidd have been if he had not let his 
fountain play naturally. Still, though he bubbled 
and brimmed over with fun, he left the impression . 
on me that .... there is a pain and care, bred, it 
may be, out of the very richness of his gifts and 



174 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-COOKS. [1858, 

abundance of his outward prosperity. Rich, in the 
prime of life, .... and children budding and 
blossoming around him as fairly as his heart could 
wish, with sparkling talents, — so many, that if he 
choose to neglect or fling away one, or two, or three, 
he would still have enough left to shine with, — who 
should be happy if not he ? . . . . 

Towards sunset we all walked out into the podere^ 
pausing a little while to look down into a well that 
stands on the verge of the lawn. Within the spacious 
circle of its stone curb was an abundant growth of 
maidenhair, forming a perfect wreath of thickly 
clustering leaves quite round, and trailing its tendrils 
downward to the water which gleamed beneath. It 
was a very pretty sight. Mr. Story bent over the 
well and uttered deep, musical tones, which were 
reverberated from the hollow depths with wonderful 
effect, as if a spirit dwelt within there, and (unlike the 
spirits that speak through mediums) sent him back 
responses even profounder and more melodious than 
the tones that awakened them. Such a responsive 
well as this might have been taken for an oracle in 
old days. 

We went along paths that led from one vineyard 
to another, and which might have led us for miles 
across the country. The grapes had been partly 
gathered, but still there were many purple or white 
clusters hanging heavily on the vines. We passed 
cottage-doors, and saw groups of contadini and con- 
tadine in their festal attire, and they saluted us gra- 
ciously; but it was observable that one of the men 



1858] ITALY. 175 

generally lingered on our track to see that no grapes 
were stolen, for there were a good many young people 
and children in our train, not only our own, but some 
from a neighboring villa. These Italian peasants 
are a kindly race, but, I doubt, not very hospitable of 
grape or fig. 

There was a beautiful sunset, and by the time we 
reached the house again the comet was already visi- 
ble amid the unextinguished glow of daylight. A 

Mr. and Mrs. B , Scotch people from the next 

villa, had come to see the Storys, and we sat till tea- 
time reading, talking, William Story drawing carica- 
tures for his children's amusement and ours, and all 
of us sometimes getting up to look at the comet, 
which blazed brighter and brighter till it went down 
into the mists of the horizon. Among the caricatures 
was one of a Presidential candidate, evidently a man 
of very malleable principles, and likely to succeed. 

Late in the evening (too late for little Rosebud) 
we drove homeward. The streets of old Siena looked 
very grim at night, and it seemed like gazing into 
caverns to glimpse down some of the side streets as 
we passed, with a light burning dimly at the end of 
them. It was after ten when we reached home, and 
climbed up our gloomy staircase, lighted by the 
glimmer of some wax moccoli which I had in my 
pocket. 

October 5th. — I have been two or three times into 
the Cathedral ; . . . . the whole interior is of marble, in 
alternate lines of black and white, each layer being 
about eight inches in width and extending horizon- 



176 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

tally. It looks very curiously, and might remind the 
spectator of a stuff with horizontal stripes. Never- 
theless, the effect is exceedingly rich, these alternate 
lines stretching away along the walls and round the 
clustered pillars, seen aloft, and through the arches ; 
everywhere, this inlay of black and white. Every 
sort of ornament that could be thought of seems to 
have been crammed into the Cathedral in one place 
or another : gilding, frescos, pictures j a roof of blue, 
spangled with golden stars ; a magnificent wheel 
window of old painted glass over the entrance, and 
another at the opposite end of the Cathedral ; statues, 
some of marble, others of gilded bronze ; pulpits of 
carved marble ; a gilded organ ; a cornice of marble 
busts of the popes, extending round the entire church ; 
a pavement, covered all over with a strange kind 
of mosaic-work in various marbles, wrought into 
marble pictures of sacred subjects ; immense clustered 
pillars supporting the round arches that divide the 
nave from the side-aisles; a clere-story of windows 
within pointed arches ; — it seemed as if the spectator 
were reading an antique volume written in black- 
letter of a small character, but conveying a high and 
solemn meaning. I can find no way of expressing its 
effect on me, so quaint and venerable as I feel this 
cathedral to be in its immensity of striped waistcoat, 
now dingy with five centuries of wear. I ought not 
to say anything that might detract from the grandeur 
and sanctity of the blessed edifice, for these attributes 
are really uninjured by any of the Gothic oddities 
which I have hinted at. 



1858.] ITALY. 177 

We went this morning to the Institute of the Fine 
Arts, which is interesting as containing a series of 
the works of the Sienese painters from a date earlier 
than that of Cimabue. There is a dispute, I believe, 
between Florence and Siena as to which city may 
claim the credit of having originated the modern art 
of painting. The Florentines put forward Cimabue 
as the first artist, but as the Sienese produce a pic- 
ture, by Guido da Siena, dated before the birth of 
Cimabue, the victory is decidedly with them. As to 
pictorial merit, to my taste there is none in either of 
these old painters, nor in any of their successors for 
a long time afterwards. At the Institute there are 
several rooms hung with early productions of the 
Sienese school, painted before the invention of oil- 
colors, on wood shaped into Gothic altar-pieces. The 
backgrounds still retain a bedimmed splendor of 
gilding. There is a plentiful use of red, and I can 
conceive that the pictures must have shed an illumina- 
tion through the churches where they were displayed. 
There is often, too, a minute care bestowed on the 
faces in the pictures, and sometimes a very strong 
expression, stronger than modem artists get, and it 
is very strange how they attained this merit while 
they were so inconceivably rude in other respects. 
It is remarkable that all the early faces of the Ma- 
donna are especially stupid, and all of the same type, 
a sort of face such as one might carve on a pumpkin, 
representing a heavy, sulky, phlegmatic woman, with 
a long and low arch of the nose. This same duli 
face continues to be assigned to the Madonna, even 

8* L 



178 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

when the countenances of the surrounding saints and 
angels are characterized with power and beauty, so 
that I think there must have been some portrait of 
this sacred personage reckoned authentic, which the 
early painters followed and religiously repeated. 

At last we came to a picture by Sodoma, the most 
illustrious representative of the Sienese school. It 
was a fresco ; Christ bound to the pillar^ after having 
been scourged. I do believe that painting has never 
done anything better, so far as expression is con- 
cerned, than this figure. In all these generations 
§ince it was painted it must have softened thousands 
of hearts, drawn down rivers of tears, been more 
effectual than a million of sermons. Keally, it is a 
thing to stand and weep at. No other painter has 
done anything that can deserve to be compared to 
this. 

There are some other pictures by Sodoma, among 
them a Judith, very noble and admirable, and full of 
a profound sorrow for the deed which she has felt it 
her mission to do. 

Aquila Neva, October 7th. — Our lodgings in Siena 
had been taken only for five days, as they were al- 
ready engaged after that period; so yesterday we 
returned to our old quarters at the Black Eagle. 

In the forenoon J and I went out of one of the 

gates (the road from it leads to Florence) and had a 
pleasant country walk. Our way wound downward, 
round the hill on which Siena stands, and gave us 
views of the Duomo and its campanile, seemingly 
pretty near, after we had walked long enough to be 



1858.] ITALY. 175 

quite remote from them. Sitting awhile on the para- 
pet of a bridge, I saw a laborer chopping the branches 
off a poplar-tree which he had felled ; and, when it 
was trimmed, he took up the large trunk on one of his 
shoulders and carried it off, seemingly with ease. He 
did not look like a particularly robust man ; but I 
have never seen such an herculean feat attempted by 
an Englishman or American. It has frequently struck 
me that the Italians are able to put forth a great deal 
of strength in such insulated efforts as this ; but I 
have been told that they are less capable of continued 
endurance and hardship than our own race. I do not 
know why it should be so, except that I presume their 
food is less strong than ours. There was no other 
remarkable incident in our walk, which lay chiefly 
through gorges of the hills, winding beneath high cliffs 
of the brown Siena earth, with many pretty scenes 
of rural landscape ; vineyards everywhere, and olive- 
trees; a mill on its little stream, over which there 
was an old stone bridge, with a graceful arch ; farm- 
houses ; a villa or two ; subterranean passages, pass- 
ing from the roadside through the high banks into the 
vineyards. At last we turned aside into a road which 
led us pretty directly to another gate of the city, and 
climbed steeply upward among tanneries, where the 
young men went about with their well-shaped legs 
bare, their trousers being tucked up till they were 
strictly breeches and nothing else. The campanile 
stood high above us ; and by and by, and very soon, 
indeed, the steep ascent of the street brought us into 
the neighborhood of the Piazza del Campo, and of our 



180 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

own hotel From about twelve o'clock till one, 

I sat at my chamber window watching the specimens 
of human life as displayed in the Piazza Tolomei. 
[Here follow several pages of moving objects.] .... 
Of course, a multitude of other people passed by, but 
the curiousness of the catalogue is the prevalence of 
the martial and religious elements. The general cos- 
tume of the inhabitants is frocks or sacks, loosely 
made, and rather shabby ; often, shirt-sleeves ; or the 
coat hung over one shoulder. They wear felt hats 
and straw. People of respectability seem to prefer 
cylinder hats, either black or drab, and broadcloth 
frock-coats in the French fashion ; but, like the rest, 
they look a little shabby. Almost all the women wear 
shawls. Ladies in swelling petticoats, and with fans, 
some of which are highly gilded, appear. The people 
generally are not tall, but have a sufficient breadth of 
shoulder ; in complexion, similar to Americans ; beard- 
ed, universally. The vehicle used for driving is a lit- 
tle gig without a top ; but these are seldom seen, and 
still less frequently a cab or other carriages. The 
gait of the people has not the energy of business or 
decided purpose. Everybody appears to lounge, and 
to have time for a moment's chat, and a disposition to 
tkht, reason or none. 

After dinner I walked out of another gate of the 
cit^, atid wandered among some pleasant country 
lane's,' bbrdered with hedges, and w^earing an English 
aspect ; at least, I could fancy so. The vicinity of 
Siena is delightful to walk about in ; there being a 
verdant outlook, a wide prospect of purple mountains, 



1858.] ITALY. 181 

though no such level valley as the Yal d' Anio ; and 
the city stands so high that its towers and domes are 
seen more picturesquely from many points than those 
of Florence can be. Neither is the pedestrian so 
cruelly shut into narrow lanes, between high stone 
walls, over which he cannot get a glimpse of land- 
scape. As I walked by the hedges yesterday I could 
have fancied that the olive- trunks were those of apple- 
trees, and that I were in one or other of the two lands 
that I love better than Italy. But the great white 
villas and the farm-houses were unlike anything I 
have seen elsewhere, or that I should wish to see again, 
though proper enough to Italy. 

October 9th. — Thursday forenoon, 8th, we went to 
see the Palazzo Publico. There are some fine old halls 
and chapels, adorned with ancient frescos and pic- 
tures, of which I remember a picture of the Virgin by 
Sodoma, very beautiful, and other fine pictures by the 
same master. The architecture of these old rooms is 
grand, the roofs being supported by ponderous arches, 
which are covered with frescos, still magnificent, 
though faded, darkened, and defaced. We likewise 
saw an antique casket of wood, enriched with gilding, 
which had once contained an arm of John the Baptist, 
— so the custode told us. One of the halls was hung 
with the portraits of eight popes and nearly forty 
cardinals, who were natives of Siena. I have done 
hardly any other sight-seeing except a daily visit to 
the Cathedral, which I admire and love the more the 
oftener I go thither. Its striped peculiarity ceases 
entirely to interfere with the grandeur and venerable 



182 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

beauty of its impression ; and I am never weary of 
gazing through the vista of its arches, and noting con- 
tinually something that I had not seen before in its 
exuberant adornment. The pavement alone is inex- 
haustible, being covered all over with figures of life- 
size or larger, which look like immense engravings of 
Gothic or Scriptural scenes. There is Absalom hang- 
ing by his hair and Joab slaying him with a spear. 
There is Samson belaboring the Philistines with the 
jawbone of an ass. There are armed knights in the 
tumult of battle, all wrought with wonderful expres- 
sion. The figures are in white marble, inlaid with 
darker stone, and the shading is effected by means of 
engraved lines in the marble, filled in with black. It 
would be possible, perhaps, to print impressions from 
some of these vast plates, for the process of cutting the 
lines was an exact anticipation of the modern art of 
engraving. However, the same thing was done — and 
I suppose at about the same period — on monumental 
brasses, and I have seen impressions or rubbings from 
those for sale in the old English churches. 

Yesterday morning, in the Cathedral, I watched a 
woman at confession, being curious to see how long 
it would take her to tell her sins, the growth of a 
week perhaps. I know not how long she had been 
confessing when I first observed her, but nearly an 
hour passed before the priest came suddenly from the 
confessional, looking weary and moist with perspira- 
tion, and took his way out of the Cathedral. The 
woman was left on her knees. This morning I 
watched another woman, and she too was very long 



1858.] ITALY. 183 

about it, and I could see the face of the priest behind 
the curtain of the confessional, scarcely inclining his 
ear to the perforated tin through which the penitent 
communicated her outpourings. It must be very 
tedious to listen, day after day, to the minute and 
commonplace iniquities of the multitude of penitents, 
and it cannot be often that these are redeemed by the 
treasure-trove of a great sin. When her confession 
was over the woman came and sat down on the same 
bench with me, where her broad-brimmed straw hat 
was lying. She seemed to be a country woman, with 
a simple, matronly face, which was solemnized and 
softened with the comfort that she had obtained by 
disburdening herself of the soil of worldly frailties 
and receiving absolution. An old woman, who haunts 
the Cathedral, whispered to her, and she went and 
knelt down where a procession of priests were to 
pass, and then the old lady begged a cruzia of me, 
and got a half-paul. It almost invariably happens, 
in church or cathedral, that beggars address their 
prayers to the heretic visitor, and probably with more 
unction than to the Virgin or saints. However, I 
have nothing to say against the sincerity of this 
people's devotion. They give all the proof of it that 
a mere spectator can estimate. 

Last evening we all went out to see the comet, 
which then reached its climax of lustre. It was like 
a lofty plume of fire, and grew very brilliant as the 
night darkened. 

October \Oth. — This morning too we went to the 
Cathedral, and sat long listening to the music of the 



184 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

organ and voices, and witnessing rites and cere- 
monies -which are far older than even the ancient 
edifice where they were exhibited. A good many- 
people were present, sitting, kneeling, or walking 
about, — a freedom that contrasts very agreeably with 
the grim formalities of English churches and our own 
meeting-houses. Many persons were in their best 
attire ; but others came in, with unabashed simplicity, 
in their old garments of labor, sunburnt women 
from their toil among the vines and olives. One 
old peasant I noticed with his withered shanks in 
breeches and blue yarn stockings. The people of 
whatever class are wonderfully tolerant of heretics, 
never manifesting any displeasure or annoyance, though 
they must see that we are drawn thither by curi- 
osity alone, and merely pry while they pray. I heart- 
ily wish the priests were better men, and that hu- 
man nature, divinely influenced, could be depended 
upon for a constant supply and succession of good 
and pure ministers, their religion has so many ad- 
mirable points. And then it is a sad pity that this 
noble and beautiful cathedral should be a mere fossil 
shell, out of which the life has died long ago. But 
for many a year yet to come the tapers will burn 
before the high altar, the Host will be elevated, the 
incense diffuse its fragrance, the confessionals be 
open to receive the penitents. I saw a father entering 
with two little bits of boys, just big enough to toddle 
along, holding his hand on either side. The father 
dipped his fingers into the marble font of holy water, — 
which, on its pedestals, was two or three times as 



1858.] ITALY. 185 

high as those small Christians, — and wetted a hand 
of each, and taught them how to ci'oss themselves. 
When they come to be men it will be impossible to 
convince those children that there is no efficacy in 
holy water, without plucking up all religious faith 
and sentiment ,by the roots. Generally, I suspect, 
when people throw off the faith they were born in, 
the best soil of their hearts is apt to cling to its 
roots. 

Kaised several feet above the pavement, against 
every clustered pillar along the nave of the Cathedral, 
is placed a statue of Gothic sculpture. In various 
places are sitting statues of popes of Sienese nativity, 
all of whom, I believe, have a hand raised in the act 
of blessmg. Shrines and chapels, set in grand, heavy 
frames of pillared architecture, stand all along the 
aisles and transepts, and these seem in many in- 
stances to have been built and enriched by noble 
families, whose arms are sculptured on the pedestals 
of the pillars, sometimes with a cardinal's hat above 
to denote the rank of one of its members. How much 
pride, love, and reverence in the lapse of ages must 
have clung to the sharp points of all this sculpture 
and architecture ! The Cathedral is a religion in 
itself, — something worth dying for to those who have 
an hereditary interest in it. In the pavement, yes- 
terday, I noticed the gravestone of a person who fell 
six centiuries ago in the battle of Monte Aperto, and 
was buried here by public decree as a meed of valor. 

This afternoon I took a walk out of one of the city 
gates, and found the country about Siena as beautiful 



18G FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

in this direction as in all others. I came to a little 
stream flowing over into a pebbly bed, and collecting 
itself into pools, with a scanty rivulet between. Its 
glen was deep, and was crossed by a bridge of several 
lofty and narrow arches like those of a Roman 
aqueduct. It is a modern structure, however. Far- 
ther on, as I wound round along the base of a hill 
which fell down upon the road by precipitous cliffs of 
brown earth, I saw a gray, ruined wall on the summit, 
surrounded with cypress-trees. This tree is very fre- 
quent about Siena, and the scenery is made soft and 
beautiful by a variety of other trees and shrubbery, 
without which these hills and gorges would have 
scarcely a charm. The road was thronged with coun- 
try people, mostly women and children, who had been 
spending the feast-day in Siena ; and parties of boys 
w^ere chasing one another through the fields, pretty 
much as boys do in New England of a Sunday, but 
the Sienese lads had not the sense of Sabbath-breaking 
like our boys. Sunday with these people is like any 
other feast-day, and consecrated to cheerful enjoy- 
ment. So much religious observance, as regards out- 
ward forms, is diffused through the whole week that 
they have no need to intensify the Sabbath except 
by making it gladden the other days. 

Returning through the same gate by which I had 
come out, I ascended into the city by a long and 
steep street, which was paved with bricks set edge- 
wise. This pavement is common in many of the 
streets, which, being too steep for horses and car- 
riages, are meant only to sustain the lighter tread 



1858.] ITALY. 187 

of mules and asses. The more level streets are paved 
with broad, smooth flagstones, like those of Florence, 
— a fashion which I heartily regret to change for the 
little penitential blocks of Rome. The walls of Siena 
in their present state, and so far as I have seen them, 
are chiefly brick ; but there are intermingled frag- 
ments of ancient stone-work, and I wonder why the 
latter does not prevail more largely. The Romans, 
however, — and Siena had Roman characteristics, — al- 
ways liked to build of brick, a taste that has made 
their ruins (now that the marble slabs are torn off) 
much less gi^and than they ought to have been. I 
am grateful to the old Sienese for having used stone 
so largely in their domestic architecture, and thereby 
rendered their city so grimly picturesque, with its 
black palaces frowning upon one another from arched 
windows, across narrow streets, to the height of six 
stories, like opposite ranks of tall men looking sternly 
into one another's eyes. 

October llth. — Again I went to the Cathedral this 
morning, and spent an hour listening to the music 
and looking through the orderly intricacies of the 
arches, where many vistas open away among the 
columns of the choir. There are five clustered columns 
on each side of the nave ; then under the dome there 
are two more arches, not in a straight line, but form- 
ing the segment of a circle ; and beyond the circle of 
the dome there are four more arches, extending to the 
extremity of the chancel. I should have said, instead 
of " clustered columns " as above, that there are five 
arches along the nave supported by columns. This 



188 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

cathedral has certainly bewitched me, to write about 
it so much, effecting nothing with my pains. I should 
judge the width of each arch to be about twenty feet, 
and the thickness of each clustered pillar is eight or 
ten more, and the length of the entire building may 
be between two and three hundred feet ; not very- 
large, certainly, but it makes an impression of gran- 
deur independent of size 

I never shall succeed even in reminding myself of 
the venerable magnificence of this minster, with its 
arches, its columns, its cornice of popes' heads, its 
great wheel-windows, its manifold ornament, all com- 
bining in one vast efl^'ect, though many men have la- 
bored individually, and through a long course of time, 
to produce this multifarious handiwork and headwork. 

I now took a walk out of the city. A road turned 
immediately to the left as I emerged from the city, 
and soon proved to be a rustic lane leading past 
several villas and farm-houses. It was a very pleasant 
walk, with vineyards and olive-orchards on each side, 
and now and then glimpses of the towers and sombre 
heaped-up palaces of Siena, and now a rural seclusion 
again ; for the hills rise and the valleys fall like the 
swell and subsidence of the sea after a gale, so that 
Siena may be quite hidden within a quarter of a mile 
of its wall, or may be visible, I doubt not, twenty 
miles away. It is a fine old town, with every prom- 
ise of health and vigor in its atmosphere, and 
really, if I could take root anywhere, I know not but 
it could as well be here as in another place. It would 
only be a kind of despair, however, that would ever 



1858.] ITALY. 189 

make me dream of finding a home in Italy ; a eense 
that I had lost my country through absence or incon- 
gruity, and that earth is not an abiding-place. I 
wonder that we Americans love our country at all, it 
having no limits and no oneness ; and when you try 
to make it a matter of the heart, everything falls away 
except one's native State ; neither can you seize hold 
of that unless you tear it out of the Union, bleeding 
and quivering. Yet unquestionably, we do stand by 
our national flag as stoutly as any people in the 
world, and I myself have felt the heart throb at sight 
of it as sensibly as other men. I think the singularity 
of our form of government contributes to give us a 
kind of patriotism, by separating us from other nations 
more entirely. If other nations had similar institu- 
tions, ■ — if England, especially, were a democracy, — 
we should as readily make ourselves at home in an- 
other country as now in a new State. 

October 1 2th. — And again we went to the Cathedr'al 
this forenoon, and the whole family, except myself, 
sketched portions of it. Even Rosebud stood gravely 
sketching some of the inlaid figures of the pavement. 
As for me, I can but try to preserve some memorial 
of this beautiful edifice in ill-fitting words that never 
hit the mark. This morning visit was not my final 
one, for I went again after dinner and walked quite 
round the whole interior. I think I have not yet 
mentioned the rich carvings of the old oaken seats 
round the choir, and the curious mosaic of lighter and 
darker woods, by which figures and landscapes are 
skilfully represented on the backs of some of the 



190 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTK-BOOKS. [1858. 

stalls. The process seems to be the same as the in- 
laying and engraving of the pavement, the material 
in one case being marble, in the other wood. The 
only other thing that I particularly noticed was, that 
in the fonts of holy water at the front entrance, 
marble fish are sculptured in the depths of the basin, 
and eels and shellfish crawling round the brim. Have 
I spoken of the sumptuous carving of the capitals of 
the columns 1 At any rate I have left a thousand 
beauties without a word. Here I drop the subject. 
As I took my parting glance the Cathedral had a 
gleam of golden sunshine in its far depths, and it 
seemed to widen and deepen itself, as if to convince 
me of my error in saying, yesterday, that it is not 
very large. I wonder how I could say it. 

After taking leave of the Cathedral, I found my way 
out of another of the city gates, and soon turned aside 

into a green lane Soon the lane passed through 

a hamlet consisting of a few farm-houses, the shabbiest 
and dreariest that can be conceived, ancient, and ugly, 
and dilapidated, with iron-grated windows below, and 
heavy wooden shutters on the windows above, — high, 
ruinous walls shutting in the courts, and ponderous 
gates, one of which was off its hinges. The farm-yards 
were perfect pictures of disarray and slovenly admin- 
istration of home affairs. Only one of these houses 
had a door opening on the road, and that was the 
meanest in the hamlet. A flight of narrow stone 
stairs ascended from the threshold to the second story. 
All these houses were specimens of a rude antiquity, 
built of brick and stone, with the marks of arched 



1858.] ITALY. 191 

doors and windows where a subsequent generation had 
shut up the lights, or the accesses which the original 
builders had opened. Humble as these dwellings are, 
— though large and high compared with rural resi- 
dences in other countries, — they may very probably 
date back to the times when Siena was a warlike re- 
public, and when every house in its neighborhood had 
need to be a fortress. I suppose, however, prowling 
banditti were the only enemies against whom a defence 
would be attempted. What lives must now be lived 
there, — in beastly ignorance, mental sluggishness, 
hard toil for little profit, filth, and a horrible discom- 
fort of fleas ; for if the palaces of Italy are overrun 
with these pests, what must the country hovels 
be! ... . 

We are now all ready for a start to-morrow. 

RADICOFANI. 

October \Zth, — We arranged to begin our journey 

at six It was a chill, lowering morning, and 

the rain blew a little in our faces before we had gone 
far, but did not continue long. The country soon lost 
the pleasant aspect which it wears immediately about 
Siena, and grew very barren and dreary. Then it 
changed again for the better, the road leading us 
through a fertility of vines and olives, after which 
the dreary and barren hills came back again, and 
formed our prospect throughout most of the day. We 
stopped for our dejeuner di la fourchette at a little old 
town called San Querico, which we entered through a 



192 FRENCH AND ITALIAN" NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

ruined gateway, the town being entirely siuTonnded 
by its ancient wall. This wall is far more picturesque 
than that of Siena, being lofty and built of stone, 
with a machicolation of arches running quite round 
its top, like a cornice. It has little more than a single 
street, perhaps a quarter of a mile long, narrow, 
paved with flagstones in the Florentine fashion, and 
lined with two rows of tall, rusty, stone houses, with- 
out a gap between them from end to end. The cafes 
were numerous in relation to the size of the town, 
and there were two taverns, — our own, the Eagle, 
being doubtless the best, and having three arched en- 
trances in its front. Of these, the middle one led to 
the guests' apartments, the one on the right to the 
barn, and that on the left to the stable, so that, as is 
usual in Italian inns, the whole establishment was 
under one roof. We were shown into a brick-paved 
room on the first floor, adorned with a funny fresco of 
Aurora on the ceiling, and with some colored prints, 

both religious and profane 

As we drove into the town we noticed a Gothic 
church with two doors of peculiar architecture, and 
while our dejeuner was being prepared we went to 
see it. The interior had little that was remarkable, 
for it had been repaired early in the last century, and 
spoilt of course ; but an old tryptich is still hanging in 
a chapel beside the high altar. It is painted on wood, 
and dates back beyond the invention of oil-painting, 
and represents the Virgin and some saints and angels. 
Neither is the exterior of the church particularly in- 
teresting, -vith the exception of the carving and orna- 



1858.] ITALY. 193 

ments of two of the doors. Both of them have round 
arches, deep and curiously wrought, and the pillars of 
one of the two are formed of a peculiar knot or twine 
in stone-work, such as I cannot well describe, but it 
is both ingenious and simple. These pillars rest on 
two nondescript animals, which look as much like 
walruses as anything else. The pillars of the other 
door consist of two figures suj)porting the capitals, and 
themselves standing on two handsomely carved lions. 
The work is curious, and evidently very ancient, and 
the material a red freestone. 

After lunch, J and I took a walk out of the 

gate of the town opposite to that of our entrance. 
There were no soldiers on guard, as at city gates of 
more importance ; nor do I think that there is really 
any gate to shut, but the massive stone gateway still 
stands entire over the empty arch. Looking back 
after we had passed through, I observed that the lofty 
upper stor}^ is converted into a dove-cot, and that 
pumpkins were put to ripen in some open chambers 
at one side. We passed near the base of a tall, square 
tower, which is said to be of Roman origin. The 
little town is in the midst of a barren region, but its 
immediate neighborhood is fertile, and an olive- 
orchard, venerable of aspect, lay on the other side of 
the pleasant lane with its English hedges, and olive- 
trees grew likewise along the base of the city wall. 
The arched machicolations, which I have before men- 
tioned, w^ere here and there interrupted by a house 
which was built upon the old wall or incorporated into 
it ; and from the windows of one of them I saw ears of 

VOL. II. 9 51 



194 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

Indian corn hung out to ripen in the sun, and some- 
body was winnowing grain at a little door that 
opened through the wall. It was very pleasant to 
see the ancient warlike rampart thus overcome with 
rustic peace. The ruined gateway is partly overgrown 
with ivy. 

Returning to our inn, along the street, we saw 

sketching one of the doors of the Gothic church, in 
the midst of a crowd of the good people of San 
Querico, who made no scruple to look over her 
shoulder, pressing so closely as hardly to allow her 
elbow-room. I must own that I was too cowardly to 
come forward and take my share of this public notice, 
so I turned away to the inn and there awaited her 
coming. Indeed, she has seldom attempted to sketch 
without findino- herself the nucleus of a thron.oj. 



VITERBO. 

The Black Eagle, October 1 ^th. — Perhaps I had 
something more to say of San Querico, but I shall 
merely add that there is a stately old palace of the 
Piccolomini close to the church above described. It 
is built in the style of the Roman palaces, and looked 
almost large enough to be one of them. Neverthe- 
less, the basement story, or part of it, seems to be 
used as a barn and stable, for I saw a yoke of oxen in 
the entrance. I cannot but mention a most wretched 
team of vetturo-horses which stopped at the door of 
our albergo : poor, lean, downcast creatures, with deep 
furrows between their ribs; nothing but skin and 



1^58.] ITALY. 195 

bone, iu short, and not even so much skin as they 
should have had, for it was partially worn off from 
their backs. The harness was fastened with ropes, 
the traces and reins were ropes ; the carriage was old 
and shabby, and out of this miserable equipage there 
alighted an ancient gentleman and lady, whom our 
waiter affirmed to be the Prefect of Florence and his 
wife. 

We left San Qiierico at two o'clock, and followed 
an ascending road till we got into the region above 
the clouds; the landscape was very wide, but very 
dreary and barren, and grew more and more so till we 
began to climb the mountain of Radicofani, the peak 
of which had been blackening itself on the horizon 
almost the whole day. When we had come into a 
pretty high region we were assailed by a real moun- 
tain tempest of wind, rain, and hail, which pelted 
down upon us in good earnest, and cooled the air a 
little below comfort. As we toiled up the mountain 
its upper region presented a very striking aspect, 
looking as if a precipice had been smoothed and 
squared for the purpose of rendering the old castle on 
its summit more inaccessible than it was by nature. 
This is the castle of the robber-knight, Ghino di 
Tacco, whom Boccaccio introduces into the Decam- 
eron. A freebooter of those days must have set a 
higher value on such a rock as this than if it had been 
one mass of diamond, for no art of mediaeval warfare 
could endanger him in such a fortress. Drav/ing yet 
nearer, we found the hillside immediately above us, 
strewn with thousands upon thousands of gi^eat frag- 



196 FRENCH AND ITALIAl^ NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

ments of stone. It looked as if some great ruin had 
taken place there, only it was too vast a ruin to have 
been the dismemberment and dissolution of anything 
made by man. 

We could now see the castle on the height pretty 
distinctly. It seemed to impend over the precipice ; 
and close to the base of the latter we saw the street 
of a town on as strange and inconvenient a founda- 
tion as ever one was built upon. I suppose the in- 
habitants of the village were dependants of the old 
knight of the castle ; his brotherhood of robbers, as 
they married and had families, settled there under the 
shelter of the eagle's nest. But the singularity is, 
how a community of people have contrived to live 
and perpetuate themselves so far out of the reach of 
the world's help, and seemingly with no means of as- 
sisting in the world's labor. I cannot imagine how 
they employ themselves except in begging, and even 
that branch of industry appears to be left to the old 
women and the children. No house w^as ever built 
in this immediate neighborhood for any such natural 
purpose as induces people to build them on other sites. 
Even our hotel, at which we now arrived, could not 
be said to be a natural growth of the soil ; it had 
originally been a whim of one of the Grand Dukes of 
Tuscany, — a hunting-palace, — intended for habitation 
only during a few weeks of the year. Of all dreary 
hotels I ever alighted at, methinks this is the most 
so ; but on first arriving I merely followed the waiter 
to look at our rooms, across stone-paved basement- 
halls dismal as Etruscan tombs ; up dim staircases, 



1858.] ITALY. 197 

and along shivering corridors, all of stone, stone, stone, 
nothing but cold stone. After glancing at these pleas- 
ant accommodations, my wife and I, with J , set 

out to ascend the hill and visit the town of Radicofani. 
It is not more than a quarter of a mile above our 
hotel, and is accessible by a good piece of road, though 
very steep. As we approached the town we were as- 
sailed by some little beggars ; but this is the case all 
through Italy, in city or solitude, and I think the 
mendicants of Radicofani are fewer than its propor- 
tion. We had not got far towards the village when, 
looking back over the scene of many miles that lay 
stretched beneath us, we saw a heavy shower appar- 
ently travelling straight towards us over hill and dale. 
It seemed inevitable that it should soon be upon us, 
so I persuaded my wife to return to the hotel ; but 

J and I kept onward, being determined to see 

Radicofani with or without a drenching. We soon 
entered the street ; the blackest, ugliest, rudest old 
street, I do believe, that ever human life incrusted 
itself v/ith. The first portion of it is the over-brim- 
ming of the town in generations subsequent to that in 
which it was surrounded by a wall ; but after going a 
little way we came to a high, square tower planted 
right across the way, with an arched gateway in its 
basement story, so that it looked like a great short- 
legged giant striding over the street of Radicofani. 
Within the gateway is the proper and original town, 
though indeed the portion outside of the gate is as 
densely populated, as ugly, and as ancient, as that 
within. 



103 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

The street was very narrow, and paved with flag- 
stones not quite so smooth as those of Florence ; the 
houses are tall enough to be stately, if they were not 
so inconceivably dingy and shabby ; but, with their 
half-dozen stories, they make only the impression of 
hovel piled upon hovel, — squalor immortalized in un- 
decaying stone. It was now getting far into the 
twilight, and I could not distinguish the particularities 
of the little town, except that there were shops, a 
cafe or two, and as many churches, all dusky with age, 
crowded closely together, inconvenient, stifled too, in 
spite of the breadth and freedom of the mountain at- 
mosphere outside the scanty precincts of the street. 
It Avas a death-in-life little place, a fossilized place, 
and yet the street was thronged, and had all the 
bustle of a city ; even more noise than a city's street, 
because everybody in Radicofani knows everybody, 
and probably gossips with everybody, being every- 
body's blood relation, as they cannot fail to have be- 
come after they and their forefathers have been shut 
up together within the narrow walls for many hun- 
dred years. They looked round briskly at J and 

me, but were courteous, as Italians always are, and 
made way for us to pass through the throng as we 
kept on still ascending the steep sti'eet. It took us 
but a few minutes to reach the still steeper and wind- 
ing pathway which climbs towards the old castle. 

After ascending above the village, the path, though 
still paved, becomes very rough, as if the hoofs of 
Ghino di Tacco's robber cavalry had displaced the 
stones and they had never been readjusted. On every 



1858.J ITALY. . 199 

side, too, except where the path just finds space 
enough, there is an enormous rubbish of huge stones, 
which seems to have fallen from the precipice above, 
or else to have rained down out of the sky. We kept 
on, and by and by reached what seemed to have been 
a lower outwork of the castle on the top ; there was 
the massive old arch of a gateway, and a great deal of 
ruin of man's work, beside the large stones that here, 
as elsewhere, were scattered so abundantly. Within 
the wall and gateway just mentioned, however, there 
was a kind of farm-house adapted, I suppose, out of 
the old ruin, and I noticed some ears of Indian corn 
hanging out of a window. There were also a few 
stacks of hay, but no signs of human or animal life ; 
and it is utterly inexplicable to me where these pro- 
ducts of the soil could have come from, for certainly 
they never grew amid that barrenness. 

We had not yet reached Ghino's castle, and, being 
now beneath it, we had to bend our heads far back- 
ward to see it rising up against the clear sky while 
we were now in twilight. The path upward looked 
terribly steep and rough, and if we had climbed it we 
should probably have broken our necks in descending 
again into the lower obscurity. We therefore stopped 

here, much against J 's will, and went back as we 

came, still wondering at the strange situation of Radi- 
cofani ; for its aspect is as if it had stepped off the 
top of the cliff and lodged at its base, though still in 
danger of sliding farther down the hillside. Emer- 
ging from the compact, grimy life of its street, we saw 
that the shower had swept by, or probably had ex- 



200 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

pencled itself in a region beneath us, for we were above 
the scope of many of the showery clouds that haunt a 
hill-country. There was a very bright star visible, I 
remember, and we saw the new moon, now a third to- 
wards the full, for the first time this evening. The 
air was cold and bracing. 

But I am excessively sleepy, so will not describe 
our great dreary hotel, where a blast howled in an 
interminable corridor all night. It did not seem to 
have anything to do with the wind out of doors, but 
to be a blast that had been casually shut in when 
the doors were closed behind the last Grand Duke 
who came hither and departed, and ever since it has 
been kept prisoner, and makes a melancholy wail 
aloug the corridor. The dreamy stupidity of this 
conceit proves how sleepy I am. 

SETTE VENE. 

October 1 5^A. — We left Radicofani long before sun- 
rise, and I saw that ceremony take place from the 
coupe of the vetturo for the first time in a long while. 
A sunset is the better sight of the two. I have always 
suspected it, and have been strengthened in the idea 
whenever I have had an opportunity of comparison. 
Our departure from Radicofani was most dreary, 
except that we were very glad to get away ; but the 
cold discomfort of dressing in a chill bedroom by 
candle-light, and our uncertain wandering through the 
immense hotel with a dim taper in search of the 
breakfast - room, and our poor breakfast of eggs, 



1858.] ITALY. 201 

Italian bread, and coffee, — all these things made me 
wish that people were created with roots like trees, 
so that they could not befool themselves with wan- 
dering about. However, we had not long been on 
our way before the morning air blew away all our 
troubles, and we rumbled cheerfully onward, ready 
to encounter even the papal custom-house officers at 
Ponte Centino. Our road thither was a pretty steep 
descent. I remember the barren landscape of hills, 
with here and there a lonely farm-house, which there 
seemed to be no occasion for, where nothing grew. 

At Ponte Centino my passport w^as examined, and 
I was invited into an office where sat the papal 
custom-house officer, a thin, subtle-looking, keen-eyed, 
sallow personage, of aspect very suitable to be the 
agent of a government of priests. I communicated 
to him my wish to pass the custom-house without 
giving the officers the trouble of examining my lug- 
gage. He inquired whether I had any dutiable ar- 
ticles, and wrote for my signature a declaration in the 
negative ; and then he lifted a sand-box, beneath 
which was a little heap of silver coins. On this 
delicate hint I asked what was the usual fee, and 
was told that fifteen pauls was the proper sum. I 
presume it was entirely an illegal charge, and that 
he had no right to pass any luggage without ex- 
amination ; but the thing is winked at by the 
authorities, and no money is better spent for the 
traveller's convenience than these fifteen ,pauls. There 
was a papal military officer in the room, and he, I 

believe, cheated me in the change of a Napoleon, as 
9* 



202 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

his share of the spoil. At the door a soldier met 
me with my passport, and looked as if he expected 
a fee for handing it to me ; but in this he was dis- 
appointed. After I had resumed my seat in the 
coupe, the porter of the custom-house — a poor, sickly 
looking creature, half dead with the malaria of the 
place — appeared, and demanded a fee for doing noth- 
ing to my luggage. He got three pauls, and looked 
but half contented. This whole set of men seem to 
be as corrupt as official peqple can possibly be ; and 
yet I hardly know whether to stigmatize them as 
corrupt, because it is not their individual delin- 
quency, but the operation of a regular system. Their 
superiors know what men they are, and calculate 
upon their getting a living by just these means. 
And, indeed, the custom-house and passport reg- 
ulations, as they exist in Italy, would be intolerable 
if there were not this facility of evading them at 
little cost. Such laws are good for nothing but to be 
broken. 

We now began to ascend again, and the country 
grew fertile and picturesque. We passed many mules 
and donkeys, laden with a sort of deep firkin on each 
side of the saddle, and these were heaped up with 
grapes, both purple and white. We bought some, and 
got what we should have thought an abundance at 
small price, only we used to get twice as many at 
Montauto for the same money. However, a Roman 
paul bought us three or four pounds even here. We 
still ascended, and came soon to the gateway of the 
town of Acquapendente, which stands on a height 



1858.] ITALY. 203 

that seems to descend by natural terraces to the 
valley below 

French soldiers, in their bluish-gray coats and 
scarlet trousers, were on duty at the gate, and one of 
them took my passport and the vetturino's, and we then 
drove into the town to wait till they should be vised. 
We saw but one street, narrow, with tall, rusty, aged 
houses, built of stone, evil smelling ; in short, a kind 
of place that would be intolerably dismal in cloudy 
England, and cannot be called cheerful even under 

the sun of Italy Priests passed and burly friars, 

one of whom was carrying a wine-barrel on his head. 
Little carts, laden with firkins of grapes, and donkeys 
with the same genial burden, brushed past our vetturo, 
finding scarce room enough in the narrow street. All 
the idlefs of Acquapendente — and they were many — 
assembled to gaze at us, but not discourteously. In- 
deed, I never saw an idle curiosity exercised in such 
a pleasant way as by the country-people of Italy. It 
almost deserves to be called a kindly interest and 
sympathy, instead of a hard and cold curiosity, like 
that of our own people, and it is displayed with such 
simplicity that it is evident no offence is intended. 

By and by the vetturino brought his passport and 
my own, with the official vise, and we kept on our 
way, still ascending, passing through vineyards and 
olives, and meeting grape-laden donkeys, till we came 
to the town of San Lorenzo Nuovo, a place built by 
Pius VI. as the refuge for the people of a lower town 
which had been made uninhabitable by malaria. The 
new town, which I suppose is hundreds of years old. 



204 FEENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l85S. 

with all its novelty shows strikingly the difference 
between places that grow up and shape out their 
streets of their own accord, as it were^ and one that is 
built on a settled plan of malice aforethought. This 
little rural village has gates of classic architecture, a 
spacious piazza, and a great breadth of straight and 
rectangular streets, with houses of uniform style, airy 
and wholesome looking to a degree seldom seen on 
the Continent. Nevertheless, I must say that the 
town looked hatefully dull and ridiculously prim, 
and, of the two, I had rather spend my life in E,adi- 
cofani. We drove through it, from gate to gate, with- 
out stopping, and soon came to the brow of a hill, 
whence we beheld, right beneath us, the beautiful 
lake of Bolsena ; not exactly at our feet, however, for 
a portion of level ground lay between, haunted by 
the pestilence which has depopulated all these shores, 
and made the lake and its neighborhood a solitude. 
It looked very beautiful, nevertheless, with a sheen 
of a silver and a gray like that of steel as the 
wind blew and the sun shone over it ; and, judging 
by my own feelings, I should really have thought 
that the breeze from its surface was bracing and 
healthy. 

Descending the hill, we passed the ruins of the old 
town of San Lorenzo, of which the prim village on 
the hill-top may be considered the daughter. There 
is certainly no resemblance between parent and child, 
the former being situated on a sort of precipitous 
bluff, where there could have been no room for piazzas 
and spacious streets, nor accessibility except by mules, 



185a] ITALY. 205 

donkeys, goats, and people of Alpine habits. There 
was an ivy-covered tower on the top of the bluff, and 
some arched cavern mouths that looked as if they 
opened into the great darkness. These were the 
entrances to Etruscan tombs, for the town on top had 
been originally Etruscan, and the inhabitants had 
buried themselves in the heart of the precipitous 
bluffs after spending their lives on its summit. 

Eeaching the plain, we drove several miles along 
the shore of the lake, and found the soil fertile and 
generally well cultivated, especially with the vine, 
though there were tracks apparently too marshy to be 
put to any agricultural purpose. "VYe met now and 
then a flock of sheep, watched by sallow-looking and 
spiritless men and boys, who, we took it for granted, 
would soon perish of malaria, though, I presume, they 
never spend their nights in the immediate vicinity 
of the lake. I should like to inquire whether animals 
suffer from the bad qualities of the air. The lake is 
not nearly so beautiful on a nearer view as it is from 
the hill above, there being no rocky margin, nor 
bright, sandy beach, but everywhere this interval of 
level ground, and often swampy marsh, betwixt the 
water and the hill. At a considerable distance from 
the shore we saw two islands, one of which is memo- 
rable as having been the scene of an empress's murder, 
but I cannot stop to fill my journal with historical 
reminiscences. 

We kept onward to the town of Bolsena, which 
stands nearly a mile from the lake, and on a site 
higher than the level margin, yet not so much so. I 



206 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

should apprehend, as to free it from danger of malaria. 
We stopped at an albergo outside of the wall of the 
town, and before dinner had time to see a good deal 
of the neighborhood. The first aspect of the town 
was very striking, with a vista into its street through 
the open gateway, and high above it an old, gray, 
square-built castle, with three towers visible at the 
angles, one of them battiemented, one taller than the 
rest, and one partially ruined. Outside of the town- 
gate there were some fragments of Etruscan ruin, 
capitals of pillars and altars with inscriptions ; these 
we glanced at, and then made our entrance through 
the gate. 

There it was again, - — the same narrow, dirty, time- 
darkened street of piled-up houses which we have so 
often seen ; the same swarm of ill-to-do people, grape- 
laden donkeys, little stands or shops of roasted chest- 
nuts, peaches, tomatoes, white and purple figs ; the 
same evidence of a fertile land, and grimy poverty 
in the midst of abundance which nature tries to heap 
into their hands. It seems strange that they can 
never grasp it. 

We had gone but a little way along this street, 
when we saw a nan'ow lane that turned aside from 
it and went steeply upward. Its name was on the 
corner, — the Via di Castello, — and as the castle prom- 
ised to be more interesting than anything else, we 
immediately began to ascend. The street — a strange 
name for such an avenue — clambered upward in the 
oddest fashion, passing under arches, scrambling up 
steps, so that it was more like a long irregular pair 



1858.] ITALY. 207 

of stairs than anything that Christians call a street ; 
and so large a part of it was under arches that we 

scarcely seemed to be out of doors. At last U , 

who was in advance, emerged into the upper air, and 
cried out that we had ascended to an upper town, and 
a larger one than that beneath. 

It really seemed like coming up out of the earth 
into the midst of the town, when we found ourselves 
so unexpectedly in upper Bolsena. We were in a lit- 
tle nook, surrounded by old edifices, and called the 
Piazza del Orologio, on account of a clock that was 
apparent somewhere. The castle was close by, and 
from its platform there was a splendid view of the lake 
and all the near hill-country. The castle itself is still 
in good condition, and apparently as strong as ever 
it was as respects the exterior walls ; but within there 
seemed to be neither floor nor chamber, nothing but 
the empty shell of the dateless old fortress. The 
stones at the base and lower part of the building 
were so massive that I should think the Etrurians 
must have laid them ; and then perhaps the Romans 
built a little higher, and the mediaeval people raised 
the battlements and towers. But we did not look 
long at the castle, our attention being drawn to the 
singular aspect of the town itself, which — to speak 
first of its most prominent characteristic ^- is the very 
filthiest place, I do believe, that was ever inhabited 
by man. Defilement was everywhere ; in the piazza, 
in nooks and corners, strewing the miserable lanes 
from side to side, the refuse of every day, and of accu- 
mulated ages. I wonder whether the ancient Romans 



208 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

were as dirty a people as we everywhere find those 
who have succeeded them ; for there seems to have 
been something in the places that have been inhabited 
by Romans, or made famous in their history, and in 
the monuments of every kind that they have raised, 
that puts people in mind of their very earthliness, 
and incites them to defile therewith whatever temple, 
column, ruined palace, or triumphal arch may fall in 
their way. I think it must be an hereditary trait, 
probably weakened and robbed of a little of its horror 
by the influence of milder ages ; and I am much afraid 
that Caesar trod narrower and fouler ways in his path 
to power than those of modern Rome, or even of this 
disgusting town of Bolsena. I cannot imagine any- 
thing worse than these, however. Rotten vegetables 
thrown everywhere about, musty straw, standing pud- 
dles, running rivulets of dissolved nastiness, — these 
matters were a relief amid viler objects. The town 
was full of great black hogs wallowing before every 
door, and they grunted at us with a kind of courtesy 
and affability as if the town were theirs, and it w^as 
their part to be hospitable to strangers. Many don- 
keys likewise accosted us with braying ; children, 
growing more uncleanly every day they lived, pes- 
tered us with begging ; men stared askance at us as 
thej lounged in corners, and women endangered us 
with slor)s which they were flinging from doorways 
into the street. No decent words can describe, no 
admissible image can give an idea of this noisome 
place. And yet, I remember, the donkeys came up 
the height loaded with fruit, and with little flat-sided 



1858.] . ITALY. 209 

barrels of wme ; the people had a good atmosphere — 
except as they polluted it themselves — on their high 
site, and there seemed to be no reason why they should 
not live a beautiful and jolly life. 

I did not mean to write such an ugly description 
as the above, but it is well, once for all, to have at- 
tempted conveying an idea of what disgusts the trav- 
eller, more or less, in all these Italian towns. Setting 
aside this grand characteristic, the upper town of Bol- 
sena is a most curious and interesting place. It was 
originally an Etruscan city, the ancient Volsinii, and 
when taken and destroyed by the Romans was said to 
contain two thousand statues. Afterwards the Ro- 
mans built a town iipon the site, including, I suppose, 
the space occupied by the lower city, which looks as if 
it had brimmed over like Radicofani, and fallen from 
the precipitous height occupied by the upper. The lat- 
ter is a strange confusion of black and ugly houses, piled 
massively out of the ruins of former ages, built rudely 
and without plan, as a pauper would build his hovel, 
and yet with here and there an arched gateway, 
a cornice, a pillar, that might have adorned a pal- 
ace The streets are the narrowest I have seen 

anywhere, — of no more width, indeed, than may suf- 
fice for the passage of a donkey with his panniers. 
They wind in and out in strange confusion, and hardly 
look like streets at all, but, nevertheless, have names 
printed on the corners, just as if they were stately 
avenues. After looking about us awhile and drav^ang 
half-breaths so as to take in the less quantity of 
gaseous pollution, we went back to the castle, and 



210 FRENCH AND ITALIAi^T NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

descended by a path winding downward from it into 
the plain outside of the town-gate. 

It was now dinner-time, .... and we had, in the 
first place, some fish from the pestiferous lake ; not, 
I am sorry to say, the famous stewed eels which, 

Dante says, killed Pope Martin, but some trout 

By the by, the meal was not dinner, but our midday 
colazione. After despatching it, we again wandered 
forth and strolled round the outside of the lower 
town, which, with the upper one, made as picturesque 
a combination as could be desired. The old wall that 
surrounds the lower town has been appropriated, long 
since, as the back-wall of a range of houses ; windows 
have been pierced through it; upper chambers, and 
loggie have been built upon it ; so that it looks some- 
thing like a long row of rural dwellings with one 
continuous front or back, constructed in a strange 
style of massive strength, contrasting with the vines 
that here and there are trained over it, and with the 
wreaths of yellow corn that hang from the windows. 
But portions of the old battlements are interspersed 
with the line of homely chambers and tiled house-tops. 
Within the wall the town is very compact, and above 
its roofs rises a rock, the sheer, precipitous bluff on 
which stands the upper town, whose foundations im- 
pend over the highest roof in the lower. At one end 
is the old castle, with its towers rising above the 
square battlemented mass of the main fortress, and if 
we had not seen the dirt and squalor that dwells with- 
in this venerable outside, we should have carried 
away a picture of gray, grim dignity, presented by a 



1858.] ITALY. 211 

long past age to the present one, to put its mean ways 

and modes to shame. sat dihgently sketching, 

and children came about her, exceedingly unfragrant, 
but very courteous and gentle, looking over her shoul- 
ders, and expressing delight as they saw each familiar 
edifice take its place in the sketch. They are a lov- 
able people, these Italians, as I find from almost all 
with whom we come in contact ; they have great and 
little faults, and no great virtues that I know of; but 
still are sweet, amiable, pleasant to encounter, save 
when they beg, or when you have to bargain with 
them. 

We left Bolsena and drove to Viterbo, passing the 
gate of the picturesque town of Montefiascone, over 
the wall of which I saw spires and towers, and the 
dome of a cathedral. I was sorry not to taste, in its 
own town, the celebrated est, which was the death- 
draught of the jolly prelate. At Viterbo, however, I 
called for some wine of Montefiascone, and had a 
little straw-covered flask, which the waiter assured us 
was the genuine est-wine. It was of golden color, 
and very delicate, somewhat resembling still cham- 
pagne, but finer, and requiring a calmer pause to ap- 
preciate its subtle delight. Its good qualities, how- 
ever, are so evanescent, that the finer flavor became 
almost imperceptible before we finished the flask. 

Viterbo is a large, disagreeable town, built at the 
foot of a mountain, the peak of which is seen through 
the vista of some of the narrow streets 

There are more fountains in Viterbo than I have 
seen in any other city of its size, and many of them 



212 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

of very good design. Around most of them there were 
wine-hogsheads, w^aiting their turn to be cleansed and 
rinsed, before receiving the wine of the present vint- 
age. Passing a doorway, J saw some men tread- 
ing out the grapes in a great vat with their naked 

feet 

Among the beggars here, the loudest and most 
Vociferous was a crippled postiUon, wearing his 
uniform jacket, green, faced with red ; and he seemed 
to consider himself entitled still to get his living from 
travellers, as having been disabled in the w^ay of his 
profession. I recognized his claim, and was rewarded 
with a courteous and grateful bow at our departure. 
.... To beggars — after my much experience both 
in England and Italy — I give very little, though I 
am not certain that it would not often be real benefi- 
cence in the latter country. There being little or no 
provision for poverty and age, the poor must often 
suffer. Nothing can be more earnest than their en- 
treaties for aid ; nothing seemingly more genuine 
than their gratitude when they receive it. They 
return you the value of their alms in prayers, and say, 
" God will accompany you." Many of them have a 
professional whine, and a certain doleful twist of the 
neck and turn of the head, which hardens my heart 
against them at once. A painter might find numerous 
models among them, if canvas had not already been 
more than sufficiently covered with their style of the 
picturesque. There is a certain brick-dust colored 
cloak worn in Viterbo, not exclusively by 
which, when ragged enough, is exceedingly artistic. 



1858.] ITALY. 213 

ROME. 

68 Piazza Poll, October 17th. — We left Viterbo 
on the 15th, and proceeded, through Monterosi, to 
Sette Vene. There was nothing interesting at Sette 
Vene, except an old Roman bridge, of a single arch, 
■which had kept its sweep, composed of one row of 
stones, unbroken for two or more thousand years, and 
looked just as strong as ever, though gray with age, 
and fringed with plants that found it hard to fix 
themselves in its close crevices. 

The next day we drove along the Cassian Way 
towards Rome. It was a most delightful morning, a 
genial atmosphere ; the more so, I suppose, because 
this was the Campagna, the region of pestilence and 
death. I had a quiet, gentle, comfortable pleasure, 
as if, after many wanderings, I was drawing near 
Rome, for, now that I have known it once, Rome 
certainly does draw into itself my heart, as I think 
even London, or even little Concord itself, or old 
sleepy Salem, never did and never will. Besides, we 
are to stay here six months, and we had now a house 
all prepared to receive us ; so that this present ap- 
proach, in the noontide of a genial day, was most 
unlike our first one, when we crept towards Rome 
through the wintry midnight, benumbed with cold, 
ill, weary, and not knowing whither to betake our- 
selves. Ah ! that was a dismal time ! One thing, 
however, that disturbed even my present equanimity 
a little was the necessity of meeting the custom-house 
at the Porta del Popolo; but my past experience 



214 frp:nch and Italian note-books. [is58. 

warranted me in believing that even these ogres 
might be mollified by the magic touch of a scudo ', 
and so it proved. We should have escaped any ex- 
amination at all, the officer whispered me, if his 
superior had not happened to be present ; but, as the 
case stood, they took down only one trunk from the 
top of the vetturo, just lifted the lid, closed it again, 
and gave us permission to proceed. So we came to 
68 Piazza Poli, and found ourselves at once at home, 
in such a comfortable, cosey little house, as I did not 
think existed in Rome. 

I ought to say a word about our vetturino, Constan- 
tino Bacci, an excellent and most favorable specimen 
of his class ; for his magnificent conduct, his liberality, 
and all the good qualities that ought to be imperial, 

S called him the Emperor. He took us to good 

hotels, and feasted us with the best ; he was kind to 
us all, and especially to little Rosebud, who used to 
run by his side, with her small white hand in his 
great brown one ; he was cheerful in his deportment, 
and expressed his good spirits by the smack of his 
whip, which is the barometer of a vetturino's inward 
weather ; he drove admirably, and would rumble up 
to the door of an albergo, and stop to a hair's-breadth, 
just where it was most convenient for us to alight ; 
he would hire postilions and horses, where other 
vetturini would take nothing better than sluggish 
oxen, to help us up the hilly roads, so that sometimes 
we had a team of seven ; he did all that we could 
possibly require of him, and was content and more, 
with a huon mano of five scudi, in addition to the 



1858.] ITALY. 215 

stipulated price. Finally, I think the tears had risen 
almost to his eyelids when we parted with him. 

Our friends, the Thompsons, through whose kind- 
ness we procured this house, called to see us soon 
after our arrival. In the afternoon, I walked with 
Rosebud to the Medici Gardens, and on our way 
thither, we espied our former servant, Lalla, who 
flung so many and such bitter curses after us, on our 
departure from Rome, sitting at her father's fruit-stall. 
Thank God, they have not taken effect. After going 
to the Medici, we went to the Pincian Gardens, and 
looked over into the Borghese grounds, which, me- 
thought, were more beautiful than ever. The same 
was true of the sky, and of every object beneath it ; 
and as we came homeward along the Corso, I won- 
dered at the stateliness and palatial magnificence of 
that noble street. Once, I remember, I thought it 
narrow, and far unworthy of its fame. 

In the way of costume, the men in goatskin 
breeches, whom we met on the Campagna, were very 
striking, and looked like Satyrs. 

October 2\st. — . . . . I have been twice to St. 
Peter's, and was impressed more than at any former 
visit by a sense of breadth and loftiness, and, as it 
were, a visionary splendor and magnificence. I also 
went to the Museum of the Capitol ; and the statues 
seemed to me more beautiful than formerly, and I was 
not sensible of the cold despondency with which I 
have so often viewed them. Yesterday we went to 
the Corsini Palace, which we had not visited before. 
It stands in the Trastevere, in the Longara, and is a 



216 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

stately palace, with a grand staircase, leading to the 
first floor, where is situated the range of picture- 
rooms. There were a good many fine pictures, but 
none of them have made a memorable impression on 
my mind, except a portrait by Vandyke, of a man in 
point-lace, very grand and very real. The room in 
which this picture hung had many other portraits 
by Holbein, Titian, Rembrandt, Rubens, and other 
famous painters, and was wonderfully rich in this 
department. In another, there was a portrait of 
Pope Julius II., by Raphael, somewhat differing from 
those at the Pitti and the Uffizzi galleries in Florence, 
and those I have seen in England and Paris ; thinner, 
paler, perhaps older, more severely intellectual, but 
at least, as high a work of art as those. 

The palace has some handsome old furniture, and 
gilded chairs, covered with leather cases, possibly 
relics of Queen Christina's time, who died here. I 
know not but the most curious object was a curule 
chair of marble, sculptured all out of one piece, and 
adorned with bas-reliefs. It is supposed to be Etrus- 
can. It has a circular back, sweeping round, so as 
to afford sufficient rests for the elbows ; and, sitting 
down in it, I discovered that modern ingenuity has 
not made much real improvement on this chair of 
three or four thousand years ago. But some chairs 
are easier for the moment, yet soon betray you, and 
grow the more irksome. 

We strolled along Longara, and found the piazza of 

St. Peter's full of French soldiers at their drill 

We went quite round the interior of the church, and 



1858.] ITALY. 217 

perceiving the pavement loose and broken near the 
altar where Guido's Archangel is placed, we picked up 
some bits of rosso antico and gray marble, to be set in 
brooches, as relics. 

We have the snuggest little set of apartments in 
Rome, seven rooms, including an antechamber ; and 
though the stairs are exceedingly narrow, there is 
realW a carpet on them, — a civilized comfort, of v/hich 
the proudest palaces in the Eternal City cannot boast. 
The stairs are very steep, however, and I should not 
wonder if some of us broke our noses down them. 
Narrowness of space within doors strikes us all rather 
ludicrously, yet not unpleasantly, after being accus- 
tomed to the wastes and deserts of the Montauto Villa. 
It is well thus to be put in training for the over-snug- 
ness of our cottage in Concord. Our windows here 
look out on a small and rather quiet piazza, with an 
immense palace on the left hand, and a smaller yet 
statelier one on the right, and just round the corner 
of the street, leading out of our piazza, is the Fountain 
of Trevi, of which I can hear the plash in the evening, 
when other sounds are hushed. 

Looking over what I have said of Sodoma's " Christ 
Bound," at Siena, I see that I have omitted to notice 
what seems to me one of its most striking character- 
istics, — its loneliness. You feel as if the Saviour were 
deserted, both in heaven and earth ; the despair is in 
him which made him say, " My God, why hast thou 
forsaken me 1 " Even in this extremity, however, he 
is still Divine, and Sodoma ali^ost seems to have 
reconciled the impossibilities of combining an omni- 

VOL. II. 10 — 



218 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

present divinity with a suffering and outraged human- 
ity. But this is one of the cases in which the specta- 
tor's imagination completes what the artist merely 
hints at. 

Mr. , the sculptor, called to see us, the other 

evening, and quite paid Powers off for all his tren- 
chant criticisms on his brother artists. He wdll not 
allow Powers to be an artist at all, or to know any- 
thing of the laws of art, although acknowledging him 
to be a great bust-maker, and to have put together 
the Greek Slave and the Fisher-Boy very ingeniously. 
The latter, however (he says), is copied from the 
Apollino in the Tribune of the Uffizzi ; and the former 
is made up of beauties that had no reference to one 
another ; and he affirms that Powers is ready to sell, 
and has actually sold, the Greek Slave, limb by limb, 
dismembering it by reversing the process of putting it 
together, — a head to one purchaser, an arm or a foot 
to another, a hand to a third. Powers knows nothing 
scientifically of the human frame, and only succeeds in 
representing it, as a natural bone-doctor succeeds in 
setting a dislocated limb by a happy accident or 
special providence. (The illustration was my own, and 
adopted by Mr. .) Yet Mr. seems to ac- 
knowledge that he did succeed. I repeat these things 
only as another instance how invariably every sculptor 
uses his chisel and mallet to smash and deface the 
marble-work of every other. I never heard Powers 

speak of Mr. , but can partly imagine what he 

would have said. 

Mr. spoke of Powers's disappointment about 



1858.] ITALY. 219 

the twentj-five-thoiisand-dollar appropriation from Con- 
gress, and said that he was altogether to blame, in- 
asmuch as he attempted to sell to the nation for that 

sum a statue which, to Mr. 's certain knowledge, 

he had already offered to private persons for a fifth 

part of it. I have not implicit faith in Mr. 's 

veracity, and doubt not Powers acted fairly in his own 
eyes. 

October 23d. — I am afraid I have caught one of 
the colds which the Roman air continually affected me 
with last winter ; at any rate, a sirocco has taken the 
life out of me, and I have no spirit to do anything. 
This morning I took a walk, however, out of the 
Porta Maggiore, and looked at the tomb of the baker 
Eurysaces, just outside of the gate, — a very singular 
ruin covered with symbols of the man's trade in stone- 
work, and with bas-reliefs along the cornice, represent- 
ing people at work, making bread. An inscription 
states that the ashes of his wife are likewise reposited 
there, in a bread-basket. The mausoleum is perhaps 
twenty feet long, in its largest extent, and of equal 
height ; and if good bakers were as scarce in ancient 
Rome as in the modern city, I do not wonder that 
they were thought worthy of stately monuments. None 
of the modern ones deserve any better tomb than a 
pile of their own sour loaves. 

I walked onward a good distance beyond the gate 
alongside of the arches of the Claudian aqueduct, 
which, in this portion of it, seems to have had little 
repair, and to have needed little, since it was built. 
It looks like a long procession, striding across the 



220 FKENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l858. 

Campagna towards the city, and entering the gate, 
over one of its arches, within the gate, I saw two or 
three slender jets of water spurting from the crevices ; 
this aqueduct being still in use to bring the Acqua 
Felice into Rome. 

Returning within the walls, I walked along their 
inner base, to the Church of St. John Lateran, into 
which I went, and sat down to rest myself, being 
languid and weary, and hot with the sun, though 
afraid to trust the coolness of the shade. I hate the 
Roman atmosphere ; indeed, all my pleasure in get- 
ting back — all my home-feeling — has already evapo- 
rated, and what now impresses me, as before, is the 
languor of Rome, — its weary pavements, its little life, 
pressed down by a weight of death. 

Quitting St. John liateran, I went astray, as I do 
nine times out of ten in these Roman intricacies, and 
at last, seeing the Coliseum in the vista of a street, I 
betook myself thither to get a fresh start. Its round 
of stones looked vast and dreary, but not particularly 
impressive. The interior was quite deserted ; except 
that a Roman, of respectable appearance, was making 
a pilgrimage at the altars, kneeling and saying a 
prayer at each one. 

Outside of the Coliseum, a neat-looking little boy 
came and begged of me ; and I gave him a baioccho, 
rather because he seemed to need it so little than 
for any other reason. I observed that he immedi- 
ately afterwards went and spoke to a well-dressed 
man, and supposed that the child was likewise 
begging of him. I (patched the little boy, however. 



1859.] ITALY. 221 

and saw that, in two or three other instances, 
after begging of other individuals, he still returned to 
this well-dressed man ; the fact being, no doubt, that 
the latter was fishing for baiocchi through the medium 
of his child, — throwing the poor little fellow out as a 
bait, while he himself retained his independent respect' 
ability. He had probably come out for a whole day's 
sport ; for, by and by, he went between the arches of 
the Coliseum, followed by the child, and taking with 
him what looked like a bottle of wine, wrapped in a 
handkerchief. 

November 2d. — The weather lately would have 
suited one's ideal of an English November, except 
that there have been no fogs ; but of ugly, hopeless 
clouds, chill, shivering winds, drizzle, and now and 
then pouring rain, much more than enough. An 
English coal fire, if we could see its honest face 
within doors, would compensate for all the unami- 
ableness of the outside atmosphere ; but we might 
ask for the sunshine of the New Jerusalem, with as 
much hope of getting it. It is extremely spirit- 
crushing, this remorseless gray, with its icy heart ; 

and the more to depress the whole family, U ■ 

has taken what seems to be the Roman fever, by 
sitting down in the Palace of the Caesars, while Mrs. 
S sketched the ruins 

[During four months of the illness of his daughter, 
Mr. Hawthorne wrote no word of Journal. — Ed.] 

February 21th, 1859. — For many days past, there 
have been tokens of the coming Carnival in the Corso 
and the adjacent streets; for example, in the shops, 



9/2-2 



FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1859. 



by the display of masks of wire, pasteboard, silk, or 
cloth, some of beautiful features, others hideous, 
fantastic, currish, asinine, huge-nosed, or otherwise 
monstrous; some intended to cover the whole face, 
others concealing only the upper part, also white 
dominos, or robes bedizened with gold -lace and 
theatric splendors, displayed at the windows of 
mercers or flaunting before the doors. Yesterday, 

U and I came along the Corso, between one and 

two o'clock, after a walk, and found all these symp- 
toms of impending merriment multiplied and intensi- 
fied; .... rows of chairs, set out along the side- 
walks, elevated a foot or two by means of planks; 
great baskets, full of confetti, for sale in the nooks 
and recesses of the streets ; bouquets of all qualities 
and prices. The Corso was becoming pretty well 
thronged with people ; but, until two o'clock, nobody 
dared to fling as much as a rosebud or a handful of 
sugar-plums. There was a sort of holiday expression 
however, on almost everybody's face, such as I have 
not hitherto seen in Rome, or in any part of Italy ; a 
smile gleaming out, an aurora of mirth, wdiich prob- 
ably will not be very exuberant in its noontide. 
The day was so sunny and bright that it made this 
opening scene far more cheerful than any day of the 
last year's carnival. As we threaded our way through 

the Corso, U kept wishing she could plunge into 

the fun and uproar as J would, and for my own 

part, though I pretended to take no interest in the 
matter, I could have bandied confetti and nosegays 
as readily and as riotously as any urchin there. But 



1859.] ITALY. 223 

my black hat and grave talma would have been too 
good a mark for the combatants, .... so we went 
home before a shot was fired 

March 1th. — I, as well as the rest of the family, 
have followed up the Carnival pretty faithfully, and 
enjoyed it as well, or rather better than could have 
been expected; principally in the street, as a mere 
looker-on, — which does not let one into the mystery 
of the fun, — and twice from a balcony, where I threw 
confetti, and partly understood why the young people 
like it so much. Certainly, there cannot well be a 
more picturesque spectacle in human life, than that 
stately, palatial avenue of the Corso, the more pic- 
turesque because so narrow, all hung with carpets 
and Gobelin tapestry, and the whole palace-heights 
alive with faces ; and all the capacity of the street 
thronged with the most fantastic figures that either 
the fancies of folks alive at this day are able to con- 
trive, or that live traditionally from year to year. 
.... The Prince of Wales has fought manfully 
through the Carnival with confetti and bouquets, and 
U received several bouquets from him, on Satur- 
day, as her carriage moved along. 

March 8th. — I went ^ith U to Mr. Motley's 

balcony, in the Corso, and saw the Carnival from it 
yesterday afternoon; but the spectacle is strangely 
like a dream, in respect to the difficulty of retaining 
it in the mind and solidifying it into a description. 
I enjoyed it a good deal, and assisted in so far as to 
pelt all the people in cylinder hats with handsful of 
confetti. The scene opens with a long array of cavalry, 



224 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l859. 

who ride through the Corso, preceded by a large band, 

playing loudly on their brazen instruments 

There were some splendid dresses, particularly con- 
tadina costumes of scarlet and gold, which seem to be 
actually the festal attire of that class of people, and 
must needs be so expensive that one must serve for a 
lifetime, if indeed it be not an inheritance 

March 9tli. — I was, yesterday, an hour or so among 
the people on the sidewalks of the Corso, just on the 
edges of the fun. They appeared to be in a decorous, 
good-natured mood, neither entering into the mem- 
ment, nor harshly repelling ; and when groups of 
maskers overflowed among them, they received their 
jokes in good part. Many women of the lower class 
were in the crowd of bystanders ; generally broad and 
sturdy figures, clad evidently in their best attire, 
and wearing a good many ornaments ; such as gold or 
coral beads and necklaces, combs of silver or gold, 
heavy ear-rings, curiously wrought brooches, perhaps 
cameos or mosaics, though I think they prefer purely 
metallic work to these. One ornament very common 
among them is a large bodkin, which they stick 
through their hair. It is usually of silver, but some- 
times it looks like steel, and is made in the shape of a 
sword, — a long Spanish thrusting-sword, for example. 
Dr. Franco told us a story of a woman of Trastevere, 
who was addressed rudely at the Carnival by a gentle- 
man ; she warned him to desist, but as he still per- 
sisted, she drew the bodkin from her hair, and stabbed 
him to the heart. 

By and by I went to Mr. Motley's balcony, and 



1859.] ITALY. 225 

looked down on the closing scenes of the Carnival. 
Methought the merry-makers labored harder to be 
mirthful, and yet were somewhat tired of their eight 
play-days; and their dresses looked a little shabby, 
rumpled, and draggled ; but the lack of sunshine — 
which we have had on all the preceding days — may 
have produced this effect. The wheels of some of the 
carriages were wreathed round and spoked with green 
foliage, making a very pretty and fanciful appearance, 
as did likewise the harnesses of the horses, which were 
trimmed with roses. The pervading noise and uproar 
of human voices is one of the most effective points of 
the matter ; but the scene is quite indescribable, and 
its effect not to be conceived without both witnessing 
and taking part in it. If you merely look at it, it de- 
presses you ; if you take even the slightest share in it, 
you become aware that it has a fascination, and you 
no longer wonder that the young people, at least, take 
such delight in plunging into this mad river of fun 
that goes roaring between the narrow limits of the 
Corso. 

As twilight came on, the moccoli commenced, and, 
as it grew darker, the whole street twinkled with 
lights, which would have been innumerable if every 
torch-bearer had not been surrounded by a host of 
enemies, who tried to extinguish his poor little 
twinkle. It was a pity to lose so much splendor as 
there might have been ; but yet there was a kind of 
symbolism in the thought that every one of those 
thousands of twinkling lights was in charge of some- 
body, who was striving with all his might to keep it 
10* o 



226 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l859. 

alive. Not merely the street-way, but all the bal- 
conies and hundreds of windows were lit up with these 
little torches ; so that it seemed as if the stars had 
crumbled into glittering fragments, and rained down 
upon the Corso, some of them lodging upon the palace- 
fronts, some falling on the ground. Besides this, 
there were gas-lights burning with a white flame ; but 
this illumination was not half so interesting as that of 
the torches, which indicated human struggle. All 
this time there were myriad voices shouting, " Senza 
MOCCOLO ! " and mingling into one long roar. We, in 
our balcony, carried on a civil war against one an- 
other's torches, as is the custom of human beings, 
within even the narrowest precincts ; but after a while 
we grew tired, and so did the crowd, apparently ; for 
the lights vanished, one after another, till the gas- 
lights — which at first were an unimportant part of 
the illumination — shone quietly out, overpowering 
the scattered twinkles of the moccoli. They were 
what the fixed stars are to the transitory splendors of 
human life. 

Mr. Motley tells me, that it was formerly the cus- 
tom to have a mock funeral of Harlequin, who was 
supposed to die at the close of the Carnival, during 
which he had reigned supreme, and all the people, or 
as many as chose, bore torches at his burial. But 
this being considered an indecorous mockery of 
Popish funereal customs, the present frolic of the 
moccoli was instituted, — in some sort, growing out 
of it. 

All last night, or as much of it as I was awake, 



1859.] ITALY. 227 

there was a noise of song and late revellers in the 
streets ; but to-day we have waked up in the sad and 
sober season of Lent. 

It is worthy of remark, that all the jollity of the 
Carnival is a genuine ebullition of spirit, without the 
aid of wine or strong drink. 

March llth. — Yesterday we went to the Catacomb 
of St. Calixtus, the entrance to which is alongside of 
the Appian Way, within sight of the tomb of Cecilia 
Metella. We descended not a very great way under 
ground, by a broad flight of stone steps, and, lighting 
some wax tapers, with which we had provided our- 
selves, we followed the guide through a great many 
intricate passages, which mostly were just wide 
enough for me to touch the wall on each side, while 
keeping my elbows close to my body ; and as to 
height, they were from seven to ten feet, and some- 
times a good deal higher It was rather pic- 
turesque, when we saw the long line of our tapers, 
for another large party had joined us, twinkling 
along the dark passage, and it was interesting to think 

of the former inhabitants of these caverns In 

one or two places there was the round mark in the 
stone or plaster, where a bottle had been deposited. 
This was said to have been the token of a martyr's 
burial-place, and to have contained his blood. After 
leaving the Catacomb, we drove onward to Cecilia 
Metella's tomb, which we entered and inspected. 
Within the immensely massive circular substance of 
the tomb was a round, vacant space, and this inte- 
rior vacancy was open at the top, and had nothing 



228 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l859. 

but some fallen stones and a heap of earth at the bot- 
tom. 

On our way home we entered the Church of 
"Domine, quo Vadis," and looked at the old frag- 
ment of the Appian Way, where our Saviour met St. 
Peter, and left the impression of his feet in one of the 
Roman paving-stones. The stone has been removed, 
and there is now only a fac-simile engraved in a 
block of marble, occupying the place where Jesus 
stood. It is a great pity they had not left the 
original stone ; for then all its brother-stones in the 
pavement would have seemed to confirm the truth of 
the legend. 

While we were at dinner, a gentleman called and 
was shown into the parlor. We supposed it to be 
Mr. May ; but soon his voice grew familiar, and my 
wife was sure it was General Pierce, so I left the 
table, and found it to be really he. I was rejoiced to 
see him, though a little saddened to see the marks of 
care and coming age, in many a whitening hair, and 
many a furrow, and, still more, in something that 
seemed to have passed away out of him, without 
leaving any trace. His voice, sometimes, sounded 
strange and old, though generally it was what it used 
to be. He was evidently glad to see me, glad to see 
my wife, glad to see the children, though there was 
something melancholy in his tone, when he remarked 

what a stout boy J had grown. Poor fellow ! he 

has neither son nor daughter to keep his heart warm. 
This morning I have been with him to St. Peter's, 
and elsewhere about the city, and find him less 



1859.] ITALY. 229 

changed than he seemed to be last night ; not at 
all changed in heart and affections. We talked freely 
about all matters that came up ; among the rest, 
about the project — recognizable by many tokens — > 
for bringing him again forward as a candidate for the 
Presidency next year. He appears to be firmly re- 
solved not again to present himself to the country, 
and is content to let his one administration stand, 
and to be judged by the public and posterity on the 
merits of that. No doubt, he is perfectly sincere ; no 
doubt, too, he would again be a candidate, if a pretty 
unanimous voice of the party should demand it. I 
retain all my faith in his administrative faculty, and 
should be glad, for his sake, to have it fully recog- 
nized; but the probabilities, as far as I can see, do 
not indicate for him another Presidential term. 

March \^th. — This morning I went with my wife 
and Miss Hoar to Miss Hosmer's studio, to see her 
statue of Zenobia. We found her in her premises, 
springing about with a bird-like action. She has a 
lofty room, with a skylight window ; it was pretty 
well warmed with a stove, and there was a small 
orange-tree in a pot, with the oranges growing on it, 
and two or three flower-shrubs in bloom. She her- 
self looked prettily, with her jaunty little velvet cap 
on the side of her head, whence came clustering out 
her short brown curls ; her face full of pleasant life 
and quick expression ; and though somewhat worn 
with thought and struggle, handsome and spirited. 
She told us that " her wig wasi growing as gray as a 
rat." 



230 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1859; 

There were but very few things in the room ; two 
or three plaster-busts, a headless cast of a plaster 
statue, and a cast of the Minerva Medica, which per- 
haps she had been studying as a help towards the 
design of her Zenobia; for, at any rate, I seemed to 
discern a resemblance or analogy between the two. 
Zenobia stood in the centre of the room, as yet un- 
finished in the clay, but a very noble and remarkable 
statue indeed, full of dignity and beauty. It is won- 
derful that so brisk a woman could have achieved a 
work so quietly impressive ; and there is something in 
Zenobia's air that conveys the idea of music, uproar, 
and a great throng all about her ; whilst she walks 
in the midst of it, self-sustained, and kept in a sort of 
sanctity by her native pride. The idea of motion is 
attained with great success ; you not only perceive 
that she is walking, but know at just what tranquil 
pace she steps, amid the music of the triumph. The 
drapery is very fine and full ; she is decked with 
Ornaments ; but the chains of her captivity hang from 
wrist to wrist ; and her deportment — indicating a 
soul so much above her misfortune, yet not insensible 
to the weight of it — makes these chains a richer 
decoration than all her other jewels. I know not 
whether there be some magic in the present im- 
perfect finish of the statue, or in the material of clay, 
as being a better medium of expression than even 
marble ; but certainly I have seldom been more im- 
pressed by a piece of modern sculpture. Miss Hos- 
mer showed us photography of her Puck — which I 
have seen in the marble — and likewise of the Will- 



1859.] ITALY. 231 

o'-the-Wisp, both very pretty and fanciful. It indi- 
cates much variety of power, that Zenobia should be 
the sister of these, which w^ould seem the more nat- 
ural offspring of her quick and vivid character. But 
Zenobia is a high, heroic ode. 

.... On my way up the Via Babuino, I met 
General Pierce. We have taken two or three walks 
together, and stray among the Roman ruins, and old 
scenes of history, talking of matters in which he is 
personally concerned, yet which are as historic as 
anything around us. He is singularly little changed ; 
the more I see him, the more I get him back, just 
such as he was in our youth. This morning, his 
face, air, and smile were so wonderfully like himself 
of old, that at least thirty years are annihilated. 

Zenobia's manacles serve as bracelets; a very in- 
genious and suggestive idea. 

March 18th. — I went to the sculpture-gallery of 
the Capitol yesterday, and saw, among other things, 
the Venus in her secret cabinet. This was my second 
view of her : the first time, I greatly admired her ; 
now, she made no very favorable impression. There 
are twenty Venuses whom I like as well, or better. 
On the whole, she is a heavy, clumsy, unintellectual, 
and commonplace figure; at all events, not in good 
looks to-day. Marble beauties seem to suffer the 
same occasional eclipses as those of flesh and blood. 
We looked at the Faun, the Dying Gladiator, and 
other famous sculptures; but nothing had a glory 
round it, perhaps because the sirocco was blowing. 
These halls of the Capitol have always had a dreary 



233 FEENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l859. 

and depressing effect upon me, very different from 
those of the Vatican. I know not why, except that 
the rooms of the Capitol have a dingy, shabby, and 
neglected look, and that the statues are dusty, and 
all the arrangements less magnificent than at the 
Vatican, The corroded and discolored surfaces of the 
statues take away from the impression of immortal 
youth, and turn Apollo''^ himself into an old stone; 
unless at rare intervals, when he appears transfigured 
by a light gleaming from within. 

March 2Sd. — I am wearing away listlessly these 

last precious days of my abode in Rome. U 's 

illness is disheartening, and by confining , it 

takes away the energy and enterprise that were the 
spring of all our movements. I am weary of Rome, 
without having seen and known it as I ought, and I 
shall be glad to get away from it, though no doubt 
there will be many yearnings to return hereafter, and 
many regrets that I did not make better use of the 
opportunities within my grasp. Still, I have been in 
Rome long enough to be imbued with its atmosphere, 
and this is the essential condition of knowing a place ; 
for such knowledge does not consist in having seen 
every particular object it contains. In the state of 
mind in which I now stand towards Rome, there is 
very little advantage to be gained by staying here 
longer. 

And yet T had a pleasant stroll enough yesterday 
afternoon, all by myself, from the Corso down past 
the Church of St. Andrea della Valle, — the site where 

* The Lycian Apollo. 



1859.] ITALY. 233 

Csesar was murdered, — and thence to the Farnese 
Palace, the noble court of which I entered ; thence to 
the Piazza Cenci, where I looked at one or two ugly- 
old palaces, and fixed on one of them as the residence 
of Beatrice's father ; then past the Temple of Vesta, 
and skirting along the Tiber, and beneath the Aven- 
tine, till I somewhat unexpectedly came in sight of 
the gray pyramid of Caius Cestius. I went out of the 
city gate, and leaned on the parapet that encloses the 
pyramid, advancing its high, unbroken slope and 
peak, where the great blocks of marble still fit almost 
as closely to one another as when they were first laid ; 
though, indeed, there are crevices just large enough 
for plants to root themselves, and flaunt and trail over 
the face of this great tomb; only a little verdure 
however, over a vast space of marble, still white in 
spots, but pervadingly turned gray by two thousand 
years' action of the atmosphere. Thence I came 
home by the Coelian, and sat down on an ancient 
flight of steps under one of the arches of the Coliseum, 
into which the sunshine fell sidelong. It was a de- 
lightful afternoon, not precisely like any weather that 
I have known elsewhere ; certainly never in America, 
where it is always too cold or too hot. It resembles 
summer more than anything which we New-England- 
ers recognize in our idea of spring, but there was an 
indescribable something, sweet, fresh, gentle, that does 
not belong to summer, and that thrilled and tickled my 
heart with a feeling partly sensuous, partly spiritual. 

I go to the Bank and read Galignani and the 
American newspapers ; thence I stroll to the Pincian 



234 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1859. 

or to the Medici Gardens ; I see a good deal of Gen- 
eral Pierce, and we talk over his Presidential life, 
which, I now really think, he has no latent desire nor 
purpose to renew. Yet he seems to have enjoyed it 
while it lasted, and certainly he was in his element as 
an administrative man ; not far-seeing, not possessed 
of vast stores of political wisdom in advance of his 
occasions, but endowed with a miraculous intuition of 
what ought to be done just at the time for action. 
His judgment of things about him is wonderful, and 
his Cabinet recognized it as such ; for though they 
were men of great ability, he was evidently the master- 
mind among them. None of them were particularly 
his personal friends when he selected them ; they all 
loved him when they parted ; and he showed me a 
letter, signed by all, in which they expressed their 
feelings of respect and attachment at the close of his 
administration. There was a noble frankness on his 
part, that kept the atmosphere always clear among 
them, and in reference to this characteristic Governor 
Marcy told him that the years during which he had 
been connected with his Cabinet had been the happiest 
of his life. Speaking of Caleb Gushing, he told me 
that the unreliability, the fickleness, which is usually 
attributed to him is an actual characteristic, but that 
it is intellectual, not moral. He has such comprehen- 
siveness, such mental variety and activit}'', that, if 
left to himself, he cannot keep fast hold of one view 
of things, and so cannot, without external help, be a 
consistent man. He needs the influence of a more 
single and stable judgment to keep him from diver- 



1859.] ITALY. 235 

gency, and, on this condition, he is a most inestimable 
coadjutor. As regards learning and ability, he has no 
superior. 

Pierce spoke the other day of the idea among some 
of his friends that his life had been planned from a 
very early period, with a view to the station which he 
ultimately reached. He smiled at the notion, said 
that it was inconsistent with his natural character, 
and that it implied foresight and dexterity beyond 
what any mortal is endowed with. I think so too ; 
but nevertheless, I was long and long ago aware that 
he cherished a very high ambition, and that, though 
he might not anticipate the highest things, he cared 
very little about inferior objects. Then as to plans, I 
do not think that he had any definite ones ; but there 
was in him a subtle faculty, a real instinct, that taught 
him what was good for him, — that is to say, promotive 
of his political success, — and made him inevitably do 
it. He had a magic touch, that arranged matters 
with a delicate potency, which he himself hardly 
recognized ; and he wrought through other minds so 
that neither he nor they always knew when and how 
far they were under his influence. Before his nomi- 
nation for the Presidency I had a sense that it was 
coming, and it never seemed to me an accident. He 
is a most singular character ; so frank, so true, so im- 
mediate, so subtle, so simple, so complicated. 

I passed by the tower in the Via Portoghese to- 
day, and observed that the nearest shop appears to 

be for the sale of cotton or linen cloth The 

upper window of the tower was half open ; of course, 



236 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. []859. 

like all or almost all other Roman windows, it is 
divided vertically, and each half swings back on 

hinges 

Last week a fritter establishment was opened in our 
piazza. It was a wooden booth erected in the open 
square, and covered with canvas painted red, which 
looked as if it had withstood much rain and sunshine. 
In front were three great boughs of laurel, not so 
much for shade, I think, as ornament. There were 
two men, and their apparatus for business was a sort 
of stove, or charcoal furnace, and a frying-pan to place 
over it ; they had an armful or two of dry sticks, some 
flour, and I suppose oil, and this seemed to be all. It 
was Friday, and Lent besides, and possibly there was 
some other peculiar propriety in the consumption of 
fritters just then. At all events, their fire burned 
merrily from morning till night, and pretty late into 
the evening, and they had a fine run of custom ; the 
commodity being simply dough, cut into squares or 
rhomboids, and thrown into the boiling oil, which 
quickly turned them to a light brown color. I sent 

J to buy some, and, tasting one, it resembled an 

unspeakably bad doughnut, without any sweetening. 
In fact, it was sour, for the Romans like their bread, 
and all their preparations of flour, in a state of acetous 
fermentation, which serves them instead of salt or 
other condiment. This fritter-shop had grown up in 
a night, like Aladdin's palace, and vanished as sud- 
denly ; for after standing through Friday, Saturday, 
and Sunday, it was gone on Monday morning, and a 
charcoal-strewn place on the pavement where the fur- 



1859.] ITALY. 237 

nace had been was the only memorial of it. It was 
curious to observe how immediately it became a loun- 
ging-place for idle people, who stood and talked all 
day with the fritter-friers, just as they might at any 
old shop in the basement of a palace, or between the 
half-buried pillars of the Temple of Minerva, which 
had been familiar to them and their remote grand- 
fathers. 

April lUh. — Yesterday afternoon I drove with Mr. 
and Mrs. Story and Mr. Wilde to see a statue of 
Venus, which has just been discovered, outside of the 
Porta Portese, on the other side of the Tiber. A 
little distance beyond the gate we came to the 
entrance of a vineyard, with a wheel-track through 
the midst of it ; and, following this, we soon came to 
a hillside, in which an excavation had been made 
with the purpose of building a grotto for keeping and 
storing wine. They had dug down into what seemed 
to be an ancient bath-room, or some structure of that 
kind, the excavation being square and cellar-like, 
and built round with old subterranean walls of brick 
and stone. Within this hollow space the statue had 
been found, and it was now standing against one of 
the walls, covered with a coarse cloth, or a canvas 
bag. This being removed, there appeared a headless 
marble figure, earth-stained, of course, and with a 
slightly corroded surface, but wonderfully delicate 
and beautiful, the shape, size, and attitude, appar- 
ently, of the Venus di Medici, but, as we all thought, 
more beautiful than that. It is supposed to be the 
original, from which the Venus di Medici was copied. 



238 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1859. 

Both arms were broken off, but the greater part of 
both, and nearly the whole of one hand, had been 
found, and these bemg adjusted to the figure, they 
took the well-known position before the bosom and 
the middle, as if the fragmentary woman retained her 
instinct of modesty to the last. There were the 
marks on the bosom and thigh where the fingers had 
touched ; whereas in the Venus di Medici, if I re- 
member rightly, the fingers are sculptured quite free 
of the person. The man who showed the statue now 
lifted from a corner a round block of marble, which 
had been lying there among other fragments, and 
this he placed upon the shattered neck of the Venus ; 
and behold, it was her head and face, perfect, all but 
the nose ! Even in spite of this mutilation, it seemed 
immediately to light up and vivify the entire figure ; 
and, whatever I may heretofore have written about 
the countenance of the Venus di Medici, I here record 
my belief that that head has been wrongfully foisted 
upon the statue ; at all events, it is unspeakably 
inferior to this newly discovered one. This face has 
a breadth and front which are strangely deficient in 
the other. The eyes are well opened, most unlike 
the buttonhole lids of the Venus di Medici ; the 
whole head is so much larger as to entirely obviate 
the criticism that has always been made on the 
diminutive head of the Di Medici statue. If it had 
but a nose ! They ought to sift every handful of 
earth that has been thrown out of the excavation, for 
the nose and the missing hand and fingers must 
needs be there; and, if they were found, the effect 



1859.] ITALY. 239 

would be like the reappearance of a divinity upori 
earth. Mutilated as we saw her, it was strangely 
interesting to be present at the moment, as it were, 
when she had just risen from her long burial, and 
was shedding the unquenchable lustre around her 
which no eye had seen for twenty or more centuries. 
The earth still clung about her ; her beautiful lips 
were full of it, till Mr. Story took a thin chip of wood 
and cleared it away from between them. 

The proprietor of the vineyard stood by ; a man 
with the most purple face and hugest and reddest 
nose that I ever beheld in my life. It must have 
taken innumerable hogsheads of his thin vintage to 
empurple his face in this manner. He chuckled 
much over the statue, and, I suppose, counts upon 
making his fortune by it. He is now awaiting a bid 
from the Papal government, which, I believe, has 
the right of pre-emption whenever any relics of ancient 
art are discovered. If the statue could but be smug- 
gled out of Italy, it might command almost any price. 
There is not, I think, any name of a sculptor on the 
pedestal, as on that of the Venus di Medici. A 
dolphin is sculptured on the pillar against which she 
leans. The statue is of Greek marble. It was first 
found about eight days ago, but has been offered for 
inspection only a day or two, and already the visitors 
come in throngs, and the beggars gather about the 
entrance of the vineyard. A wine-shop, too, seems 
to have been opened on the premises for the accom- 
modation of this great concourse, and we saw a row 
of German artists sitting at a long table in the open 



240 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l859. 

air, each with a glass of thin wine and something to 
eat before him ; for the Germans refresh nature ten 
times to other persons once. 

How the whole world might be peopled with antique 
beauty if the Romans would only dig ! 

April 19th. — General Pierce leaves Rome this 
morning for Venice, by way of Ancona, and taking 
the steamer thence to Trieste. I had hoped to make 

the journey along with him; but U 's terrible 

illness has made it necessary for us to continue here 
another month, and we are thankful that this seems 
now to be the extent of our misfortune. Never 
having had any trouble before that pierced into my 
very vitals, I did not know what comfort there might 
be in the manly sympathy of a friend ; but Pierce has 
undergone so great a sorrow of his own, and has so 
large and kindly a heart, and is so tender and so 
strong, that he really did me good, and I shall always 
love him the better for the recollection of his minis- 
trations in these dark days. Thank God, the thing 
we dreaded did not come to pass. 

Pierce is wonderfully little changed. Indeed, now 
that he has won and enjoyed — if there were any 
enjoyment in it — the highest success that public life 
could give him, he seems more like what he was in 
his early youth than at any subsequent period. He 
is evidently happier than I have ever known him 
since our college days; satisfied with what he has 
been, and with the position in the country that re- 
mains to him, after filling such an office. Amid all 
his former successes, — early as they came, and great 



1859.] ITALY. 241 

as they were, — I always perceived that something 
gnawed within him, and kept him forever restless and 
miserable. Nothing he won was -worth the winning, ex- 
cept as a step gained toward the summit. I cannot tell 
how early he began to look towards the Presidency ; 
but I believe he would have died an unhappy man 
without it. And yet what infinite chances there 
seemed to be against his attaining it ! Vf hen I look 
at it in one way, it strikes me as absolutely miracu- 
lous ; in another, it came like an event that I had all 
along expected. It was due to his wonderful tact, 
which is of so subtle a character that he himself is 
but partially sensible of it. 

I have found in him, here in Rome, the whole of 
my early friend, and even better than I used to know 
him ; a heart as true and affectionate, a mind much 
widened and deepened by his experience of life. We 
hold just the same relation to each other as of yore, 
and we have passed all the turning-off places, and 
may hope to go on together still the same dear friends 
as long as we live. I do not love him one whit the 
less for having been President, nor for having done me 
the greatest good in his power; a fact that speaks 
eloquently in his favor, and perhaps says a little for 
myself If he had been merely a benefactor, perhaps 
I might not have borne it so well ; but each did his 
best for the other as friend for friend. 

May \f)th. — Yesterday afternoon we went to the 
Barberini picture-gallery to take a farewell loolv at 
the Beatrice Cenci, which I have twice visited before 
since our return from Florence. I attempted a de- 

VOL. TI. 11 p 



242 FEENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1859. 

scription of it at my first visit, more than a year ago, 
but the picture is quite mdescribable and unaccount- 
able in its effect, for if jow attempt to analyze it you 
can never succeed in getting at the secret of its fasci- 
nation. Its peculiar expression eludes a straightfor- 
ward glance, and can only be caught by side glimpses, 
or when the eye falls upon it casually as it were, and 
without thinking to discover anything, as if the pic- 
ture had a life and consciousness of its own, and were 
resolved not to betray its secret of gTief or guilt, 
though it wears the full expression of it when it im- 
agines itself unseen. I think no other such magical 
effect can ever have been wrought by pencil. I looked 
close into its eyes, with a determination to see all that 
there was in them, and could see nothing that might 
not have been in any young girl's eyes ; and yet, a 
moment afterwards, there was the expression — seen 
aside, and vanishing in a moment — of a being un- 
humanized by some terrible fate, and gazing at me 
out of a remote and inaccessible region, where she 
was frightened to be alone, but where no sympathy 
could reach her. The mouth is beyond measure 
touching; the lips apart, looking as innocent as a 
baby's after it has been crying. The picture never 
can be copied. Guide himself could not have done it 
over again. The copyists get all sorts of expression, 
gp.y as well as grievous ; some copies have a coquet- 
tish air, a half-backward glance, thrown alluring at 
the spectator, but nobody ever did catch, or ever will, 
the vanishing charm of that sorrow. I hated to leave 
the picture, and yet was glad when I had taken my 



1859.] FRANCE. 243 

last glimpse, because it so perplexed and troubled me 
not to be able to get hold of its secret. 

Thence we went to the Church of the Capuchins, 
and saw Guido's Archangel. I have been several 
times to this church, but never saw the picture before, 
though I am familiar with the mosaic copy at St. 
Peter's, and had supposed the latter to be an equiva- 
lent representation of the original. It is nearly or 
quite so as respects the general effect ; but there is a 
beauty in the archangel's face that immeasurably sur- 
passes the copy, — the expression of heavenly severity, 
and a degree of pain, trouble, or disgust, at being 
brought in contact with sin, even for the purpose of 
quelling and punishing it. There is something fini- 
cal in the copy, which I do not find in the original. 
The sandalled feet are here those of an angel ; in the 
mosaic they are those of a celestial coxcomb, treading 
daintily, as if he were afraid they would be soiled by 
the touch of Lucifer. 

After looking at the Archangel we went down 
under the church, guided by a fleshy monk, and saw 
the famous cemetery, where the dead monks of many 
centuries back have been laid to sleep in sacred earth 
from Jerusalem 

FEANCE. 

Hotel des Colonies, Marseilles, May 29th, Saturday. 
— Wednesday was the day fixed for our departm-e 
from Eome, and after breakfast I walked to the 
Pincian, and saw the garden and the city, and the 
Borghese grounds, and St. Peter's in an earlier sun- 



'24:4: FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1859. 

light cL^n ever before. Methought they nevwr looked 
so beautiful, nor the sky so bright and blue. I saw 
Soracte on the horizon, and I looked at everything 
as if for the last time ; nor do 1' wish ever to see any 
of these objects again, though no place ever took so 
strong a hold of my being as Rome, nor ever seemed 
so close to me and so strangely familiar. I seem to 
know it better than my birthplace, and to have knowir 
it longer; and though I have been very miserable 
there, and languid with the effects of the atmosphere, 
and disgusted with a thousand things in its daily 
life, still I cannot say I hate it, perhaps might fairly 
own a love for it. But life being too short for such 
questionable and troublesome enjoyments, I desire 
never to set eyes on it again 

.... We traversed again that same weary and 
dreary tract of country which we passed over in a 
winter afternoon and night on our first arrival in 
Rome. It is as desolate a country as can well be 
imagined, but about midway of our journey we came 
to the sea-shore, and kept very near it during the 
rest of the way. The sight and fragrance of it were 
exceedingly refreshing after so long an interval, and 

U revived visibly as we rushed along, while J 

chuckled cind contorted himself with ineffable delight. 

We reached Civita Vecchia in three or four hours, 

and were there subjected to various troubles 

All the while Miss S and I were bothering about 

the passport, the rest of the family sat in the sun on 
the quay, with all kinds of bustle and confusion 
around them ; a very trying experience to U-^ after 



1859.] FRANCE. 245 

the long seclusion and quiet of her sick-chamber. But 
she did not seem to suffer from it, and we finally 

reached tho steamer in good condition and spirits 

I slept wretchedly in my short and narrow berth, 
more especially as there was an old gentleman who 
snored as if he were sounding a charge ; it was 
terribly hot too, and I rose before four o'clock, and was 
on deck amply in time to watch the distant approach 
of sunrise. We arrived at Leghorn pretty early, and 
might have gone ashore and spent the day. Indeed, 
we had been recommended by Dr. Franco, and had 
fully purposed to spend a week or ten days there, in 

expectation of benefit to U 's health from the sea 

air and sea bathing, because he thought her still too 
feeble to make the whole voyage to Marseilles at a 
stretch. But she showed herself so strong that we 
thought she would get as much good from our three 
days' voyage as from the days by the sea-shore. 
Moreover, .... we all of us still felt the languor of 
the Roman atmosphere, and dreaded the hubbub and 

crazy confusion of landing at an Italian port 

So we lay in the harbor all day without stirring from 
the steamer It would have been pleasant, how- 
ever, to have gone to Pisa, fifteen miles oft', and seen 
the leaning tower ; but, for my part, I have arrived 
at that point where it is somewhat pleasanter to sit 
quietly in any spot whatever than to see whatever 
grandest or most beautiful thing. At least this was 
my mood in the harbor of Leghorn. From the deck 
of the steamer there were many things visible that 
might have been interesting to describe : the boats 



24G FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l859. 

of peciiliar rig, and covered with awning ; the crowded 
shipping ; the disembarkation of horses from the 
French cavalry, which were lowered from steamers 
into gondolas or lighters, and hung motionless, like 
the sign of the Golden Fleece, during the transit, only 
kicking a little when their feet happened to graze the 
vessel's side. One horse plunged overboard, and nar- 
rowly escaped drowning. There was likewise a disem- 
barkation of French soldiers in a train of boats, which 
rowed shoreward with sound of trumpet. The French 
are concentrating a considerable number of troops at 
this point. 

Our steamer was detained by order of the French 
government to take on board despatches ; so that, 
instead of sailing at dusk, as is customary, we lay in 
the harbor till seven of the next morning. A number 
of young Sardinian officers, in green uniform, came 
on board, and a pale and picturesque-looking Italian, 
and other worthies of less note, — English, American, 
and of all races, — among them a Turk with a little 
boy in Christian dress ; also a Greek gentleman with 
his young bride. 

At the appointed time we weighed anchor for 
Genoa, and had a beautiful day on the Mediterranean, 
and for the first time in my life I saw the real dark 
blue of the sea. I do not remember noticing it on 
my outward voyage to Italy. It is the most beautiful 
hue that can be imagined, like a liquid sky ; and it 
retains its lustrous blue directly nnder the side of the 
ship, where the water of the mid-Atlantic looks 
greenish We reached Genoa at seven in the 



1859.] FRANCE. 247 

afternoon Genoa looks most picturesquely from 

the sea, at the foot of a sheltering semicircle of 
lofty hills; and as we lay in the harbor we saw, 
among other interesting objects, the gTeat Doria 
Palace, with its gardens, and the Cathedral, and a 
heap and sweep of stately edifices, with the moun- 
tains looking down upon the city, and crowned with 
fortresses. The variety of hue in the houses, white, 
green, pink, and orange, was very remarkable. It 
would have been well to go ashore here for an hour 
or two and see the streets, — having already seen the 
palaces, churches, and public buildings at our former 
visit, — and buy a few specimens of Genoa goldsmiths' 
work ; but I preferred the steamer's deck, so the 
evening passed pleasantly away ; the two lighthouses 
at the entrance of the port kindled up their fires, and 
at nine o'clock the evening gun thundered from the 
fortress, and was reverberated from the heights. We 
sailed away at eleven, and I was roused from my first 
rileep by the snortings and hissings of the vessel as 
she got under way. 

At Genoa we took on board some more passengers, 
an English nobleman with his lady being of the 
number. These were Lord and Lady J , and be- 
fore the end of our voyage his lordship talked to me 
of a translation of Tasso in which he is engaged, 
and a stanza or two of which he repeated to me. I 
really liked the lines, and liked too the simplicity and 
frankness with which he spoke of it to me a stranger, 
and the way he seemed to separate his egotism from 
ih& idea which he evidently had that he is going to 



248 FKENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [lS59. 

make an excellent translation. I sincerely hope it 
may be so. He began it without any idea of publish- 
ing it, or of ever bringing it to a conclusion, but 
merely as a solace and occupation while in great 
trouble during an illness of his wife, but he has grad- 
ually come to find it the most absorbing occupation 
he ever undertook; and as Mr. Gladstone and other 
high authorities give him warm encouragement, he 
now means to translate the entire poem, and to pub- 
lish it with beautiful illustrations, and two years hence 
the world may expect to see it. I do not quite per- 
ceive how such a man as this — a man of frank, warm, 
simple, kindly nature, but surely not of a poetical 
temperament, or very refined, or highly cultivated — 
should make a good version of Tasso's poems; but 
perhaps the dead poet's soul may take possession of 
this healthy organization, and wholly turn him to its 
own purposes. 

The latter part of our voyage to-day lay close along 
the coast of France, which was hilly and picturesque, 
and as we approached Marseilles was very bold and 
striking. We steered among rocky islands, rising 
abruptly out of the sea, mere naked crags, without a 
trace of verdure upon them, and with the surf break- 
ing at their feet. They were unusual specimens of 
what hills would look like without the soil, that is to 
them what flesh is to a skeleton. Their shapes were 
often wonderfully fine, and the great headlands thrust 
themselves out, and took such hues of light and shade 
that it seemed like sailing through a picture. In the 
course of the afternoon a squall came up and black- 



1859.] FRANCE. 249 

ened the sky all over in a twinkling ; our vessel pitched 
and tossed, and a brig a little way from us had her 
sails blown about in wild fashion. The blue of the 
sea turned as black as night, and soon the rain began 
to spatter down upon us, and continued to sprinkle 
and drizzle a considerable time after the wind had sub- 
sided. It was quite calm and pleasant when we en- 
tered the harbor of Marseilles, which lies at the foot of 
very fair hills, and is set among great cliffs of stone. 
I did not attend much to this, however, being in dread 
of the difficulty of landing and passing through the 
custom-house with our twelve or fourteen trunks and 
numberless carpet-bags. The trouble vanished into 
thin air, nevertheless, as we approached it, for not a 
single trunk or bag was opened, and, moreover, our 
luggage and ourselves were not only landed, but the 
greater part of it conveyed to the railway without any 
expense. Long live Louis Napoleon, say L We es- 
tablished ourselves at the Hotel des Colonies, and then 

Miss S , J , and I drove hither and thither 

about Marseilles, making arrangements for our journey 
to Avignon, where we mean to go to-day. We might 
have avoided a good deal of this annoyance ; but 
travellers, like other people, are continually getting 
their experience just a little too late. It was after 
nine before we got back to the hotel and took our tea 
in peace. 

AVIGNOI^. 

Hdtel de V Europe, June Xst. — I remember nothing 
very special to record about Marseilles ^ though it was 
11* 



250 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1859. 

really like passing from death into life, to find our- 
selves in busy, cheerful, effervescing France, after liv- 
ing so long between asleep and awake in sluggish 
Italy. Marseilles is a very interesting and entertain- 
ing town, with its bold surrounding heights, its wide 
streets, — so they seemed to us after the Roman 
alleys, — its squares, shady with trees, its diversified 
population of sailors, citizens, Orientals, and what not ; 
but I have no spirit for description any longer ; being 
tired of seeing things, and still more of telling myself 
about them. Only a young traveller can have patience 
to write -his travels. The newest things, nowadays, 
have a familiarity to my eyes ; whereas in their lost 
sense of novelty lies the charm and power of de- 
scription. 

On Monday (30th May), though it began with heavy 
rain, we set early about our preparations for depart- 
ure, .... and, at about three, we left the Hotel des 
Colonies. It is a very comfortable hotel, though 
expensive. The Restaurant connected with it occu- 
pies the enclosed court-yard and the arcades around 
it ; and it was a good amusement to look down from 
the surrounding gallery, communicating with our 
apartments, and see the fashion and manner of 
French eating, all the time going forward. In sunny 
weather a great awning is spread over the whole 
court, across from the upper stories of the house. 
There is a grass plat in the middle, and a very 
spacious and airy dining-saloon is thus formed. 

Our railroad carriage was comfortable, and we 
found in it, besides two other Frenchwomen, two 



1859.] FRANCE. 251 

nuns. They were very devout, and sedulously read 
their little books of devotion, repeated prayers under 
their breath, kissed the crucifixes which hung at their 
girdles, and told a string of beads, which they passed 
from one to the other. So much were they occupied 
with these duties, that they scarcely looked at the 
scenery along the road, though, probably, it is very 
rare for them to see anything outside of their convent- 
walls. They never failed to mutter a prayer and kiss 
the crucifix whenever we plunged into a tunnel. If 
they glanced at their fellow-passengers, it was shyly 
and askance, with their lips in motion all the time, 
like children afraid to let their eyes wander from their 
lesson-book. One of them, however, took occasion 

to pull down R 's dress, which, in her frisky 

movements about the carriage, had got out of place, 
too high for the nun's sense of decorum. Neither of 
them was at all pretty, nor was the black stuff dress 
and white muslin cap in the least becoming, neither 
were their features of an intelligent or high-bred 
stamp. Their manners, however, or such little 
glimpses as I could get of them, were unexception- 
alile ; and when I drew a curtain to protect one of 
them from the sun, she made me a very courteous 
gesture of thanks. 

We had some very good views both of sea and 
hills; and a part of our way lay along the banks 

of the Rhone By the by, at the station at 

Marseilles, I bought the two volumes of the ^'Livre 
des Merveilles," by a certain author of my acquaint- 
ance, translated into French, and printed and illus- 



252 FEENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1859. 

trated in very pretty style. Miss S also bought 

them, and, in answer to her inquiry for other works 
by the same author, the bookseller observed that 
"she did not think Monsieur Nathaniel had pub- 
lished anything else." The Christian name seems 
to be the most important one in France, and still 
more especially in Italy. 

"We arrived at Avignon, Hotel de I'Europe, in the 

dusk of the evening The lassitude of Rome 

still clings to us, and I, at least, feel no spring of life 
or activity, whether at morn or eve. In the morning 
we found ourselves very pleasantly situated as re- 
gards lodgings. The gallery of our STiite of rooms 
looks down as usual into an enclosed court, three 
sides of which are formed by the stone house and 
its two wings, and the third by a high wall, with 
a gateway of iron between two lofty stone pillars, 
which, for their capitals, have great stone vases, with 
grass growing in them, and hanging over the brim. 
There is a large plane-tree in one corner of the court, 
and creeping plants clamber up trellises; and there 
are pots of flowers and bird-cages, all of which give 
a very fresh and cheerful aspect to the enclosure. 
The court is paved with small round stones; the 
omnibus belonging to the hotel, and all the carriages 
of guests, drive into it; and the wide arch of the 
stable door opens under the central part of the house. 
Nevertheless, the scene is not in all respects that of 
a stable-yard; for gentlemen and ladies come from 
the salle ct manger and other rooms, and stand 
talking in the court, or occupy chairs and seats 



1859.] FEANCE. 253 

there; children play about; the hostess or her 
daughter often appears and talks with her guests 
or servants ; dogs lounge, and, in short, the court 
might well enough be taken for the one scene of 
a classic play. The hotel seems to be of the first 
class, though such would not be indicated, either in 
England or America, by thus mixing up the stable 
with the lodgings. I have taken two or three rambles 
about the town, and have climbed a high rock which 
dominates over it, and gives a most extensive view 
from the broad table-land of its summit. The old 
church of Avignon — as old as the times of its popes, 
and older — stands close beside this mighty and 
massive crag. We went into it, and found it a dark 
old place, with broad, interior arches, and a singularly 
shaped dome ; a venerable Gothic and Grecian porch, 
with ancient frescos in its arched spaces ; some 
dusky pictures within ; an ancient chair of stone, 
formerly occupied by the popes, and much else that 
would have been exceedingly interesting before I 
went to Rome. But Rome takes the charm out of 
all inferior antiquity, as well as the hfe out of human 
beings. 

This forenoon, J and I have crossed the Rhone 

by a bridge, just the other side of one of the city 
gates, which is near our hotel. We walked along the 
river-side, and saw the ruins of an ancient bridge, 
which ends abruptly in the midst of the stream ; two 
or three arches still making tremendous strides 
across, while the others have long ago been crumbled 
away by the rush of the rapid river. The bridge was 



254 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l859. 

originally founded by St. Benedict, who received a 
Divine order to undertake the work, while yet a 
shepherd-boy, with only three sous in his pocket j 
and he proved the authenticity of the mission by 
taking an immense stone on his shoulder, and laying 
it for the foundation. There is still an ancient chapel 
midway on the bridge, and I believe St. Benedict 
lies buried there, in the midst of his dilapidated 
work. The bridge now used is considerably lower 
'down the stream. It is a wooden suspension-bridge, 
broader than the ancient one, and doubtless more 
than supplies its place ; else, unquestionably, St. 
Benedict would think it necessary to repair his own. 
The view from the inner side of this ruined structure, 
grass-grown and weedy, and leading to such a pre- 
cipitous plunge into the swift river, is very pictu- 
resque, in connection with the gray town and above 
it, the great, massive bulk of the cliff, the towers 
of the church, and of a vast old edifice, shapeless, 
ugly, and venerable, which the popes built and occu- 
pied as their palace, many centuries ago 

After dinner we all set out on a walk, in the course 
of which we called at a bookseller's shop to show 

U an enormous cat, which I had already seen. 

It is of the Angola breed, of a mottled yellow color, 
and is really a wonder ; as big and broad as a toler- 
ably sized dog, very soft and silken, and apparently 
of the gentlest disposition. I never imagined the 
like, nor felt anything so deeply soft as this great 
beast. Its master seems very fond and proud of it ; 
and, great a favorite as the cat is, she does not take 



1859.] FRANCE. 255 

airs upon herself, but is gently shy and timid in her 
demonstrations. 

We ascended the great Rocher above the palace of 
the popes, and on our way looked into the old church, 
which was so dim in the decline of day that we could 
not see within the dusky arches, through which the 
chapels communicated with the nave. Thence we 
pursued our way up the farther ascent, and, standing 
on the edge of the precipice, — protected by a parapet 
of stone, and in other places by an iron railing, — we 
could look down upon the road that winds its dusky 
track far below, and at the river Rhone, which eddies 
close beside it. This is indeed a massive and lofty 
cliff, and it tumbles down so precipitously that 1 
could readily have flung myself from the bank, and 
alighted on my head in the middle of the river. The 
Ehone passes so near its base that I threw stones a 
good way into its current. We talked with a man of 
Avignon, who leaned over the parapet near by, and 
he was very kind in explaining the points of view, 
and told us that the river, which winds and doubles 
upon itself so as to look like at least two rivers, is 
really the Rhone alone. The Durance joins with it 
within a few miles below Avignon, but is here in- 
visible. 

Hdtel de V Europe, June 2d. — This morning we 
went again to the Duomo of the popes ; and this 
time we allowed the custode, or sacristan, to show us 
the curiosities of it. He led us into a chapel apart, 
and showed us the old Gothic tomb of Pope John 



256 FKENGH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1859. 

XXII., where the recumbent statue of the pope lies 
beneath one of those beautiful and venerable canopies 
of stone which look at once so light and so solemn. 
I know not how many hundred years old it is, but 
everything of Gothic origin has a faculty of conveying 
the idea of age ; whereas classic forms seem to have 
nothing to do with time, and so lose the kind of im~ 
pressiveness that arises from suggestions of decay and 
the past. 

In the sacristy the guide opened a cupboard that 
contained the jewels and sacred treasures of the 
church, and showed a most exquisite figure of Christ 
in ivory, represented as on a cross of ebony ; and it 
was executed with wonderful truth and force of ex- 
pression, and with great beauty likewise. I do not 
see what a full-length marble statue could have had 
that was lacking in this little ivory figure of hardly 
more than a foot high. It is about two centuries 
old, by an unknown artist. There is another famous 
ivory statuette in Avignon which seems to be more 
celebrated than this, but can hardly be superior. I 
shall gladly look at it if it comes in my way. 

Next to this, the prettiest thing the man showed us 
was a circle of emeralds, in one of the holy imple- 
ments ; and then he exhibited a little bit of a pope's 
skull ; also a great old crozier, that looked as if made 
chiefly of silver, and partly gilt ; but I saw where the 
plating of silver was worn away, and betrayed the 
copper of its actual substance. There were two or 
three pictures in the sacristy, by ancient and modern 
French artists, very unlike the productions of the 



1850.] FRANCE. 257 

Italian masters, but not without a beauty of their 
own. 

Leaving the sacristy, we returned into the church, 

Tvhere U and J began to draw the pope's old 

stone chair. There is a beast, or perhaps more than 
one, grotesquely sculptured upon it ; the seat is high 
and square, the back low and pointed, and it offers no 
enticing promise to a weary man. 

The interior of the church is massively picturesque, 
with its vaulted roof, and a stone gallery, heavily 
ornamented, running along each side of the nave. 
Each arch of the nave gives admittance to a chapel, 
in all of wdiich there are pictures, and sculptures in 
most of them. One of these chapels is of the time of 
Charlemagne, and has a vaulted roof of admirable 
architecture, covered with frescos of modern date and 
little merit. In an adjacent chapel is the stone monu- 
ment of Pope Benedict, whose statue reposes on it, 
like many which I have seen in the Cathedral of York 
and other old English churches. In another part we 
saw a monument, consisting of a plain slab supported 
on pillars ; it is said to be of a Roman or very early 
Christian epoch. In another chapel was a figure of 
Christ in wax, I believe, and clothed in real drapery ; 
a Yery ugly object. Also, a figure reposing under a 
slab, which strikes the spectator with the idea that it 
is really a dead person enveloped in a shroud. There 
are whidows of painted glass in some of the chapels ; 
and the gloom of the dimly lighted interior, espe- 
cially beneath the broad, low arches, is very impressive. 

While we were there some women assp^^led at one 



258 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1859. 

of the altars, and went through their acts of devotion 
without the help of a priest ; one and another of them 
alternately repeating prayers, to which the rest re- 
sponded. The murmur of their voices took a musical 
tone, which was reverberated by the vaulted arches. 

U and I now came out ; and, under the porch, 

we found an old woman selling rosaries, little religious 
books, and other holy things. We bought two little 
medals of the Immaculate Virgin, one purporting to 
be of silver, the other of gold ; but as both together 
cost only two or three sous, the genuineness of the 
material may well be doubted. We sat down on the 
steps of a crucifix which is placed in front of the 
church, and the children began to draw the porch, of 
which I hardly know whether to call the architecture 
classic or Gothic (as I said before) ; at all events it 
has a venerable aspect, and there are frescos within its 

arches by Simone Memmi The popes' palace 

is contiguous to the church, and just below it, on the 
hillside. It is now occupied as barracks by some 
regiments of soldiers, a number of whom were loun- 
ging before the entrance ; but we passed the sentinel 
without being challenged, and addressed ourselves to 
the concierge, who readily assented to our request to 
be shown through the edifice. A French gentleman 
and lady, likewise, came with similar purpose, and went 
the rounds along with us. The palace is such a con- 
fused heap and conglomeration of buildings, that it is 
impossible to get within any sort of a regular descrip- 
tion. It is a huge, shapeless mass of architecture; 
and if it ever had any pretence to a plan, it has lost it 



1859.] FRANCE. 259 

in the modern alterations. For instance, an immense 
and lofty chapel, or rather church, has had two floors, 
one above the other, laid at different stages of its 
height ; and the upper one of these floors, which ex- 
tends just where the arches of the vaulted roof begin 
to spring from the pillars, is ranged round with the 
beds of one of the regiments of soldiers. They are 
small iron bedsteads, each with its narrow mattress, 
and covered with a dark blanket. On some of them 
lay or lounged a soldier ; other soldiers were cleaning 
their accoutrements ; elsewhere we saw parties of them 
playing cards. So it was wherever we went among 
those large, dingy, gloomy halls and chambers, which, 
no doubt, were once stately and sumptuous, with pic- 
tures, with tapestry, and all sorts of adornment that 
the Middle Ages knew how to use. The windows 
threw a sombre light through embrasures at least 
two feet thick. There were staircases of magnificent 
breadth. We were shown into two 'small chapels, in 
diff'erent parts of the building, both containing the re- 
mains of old frescos wofully defaced. In one of them 
was a light, spiral staircase of iron, built in the centre 
of the room as a means of contemplating the frescos, 
which were said to be the work of our old friend 
Giotto Finally, we climbed a long, long, nar- 
row stair, built in the thickness of the wall, and thus 
gained access to the top of one of the towers, whence 
wo saw the noblest landscapes, mountains, plains, and 
the Rhone, broad and bright, winding hither and 
thither^ as if it had lost its way. 

Beneath our feet was the gray, ugly old palace, 



260 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l859. 

and its many courts, just as void of system and as in- 
conceivable as when we were burrowing through its 
bewildering passages. No end of historical romances 
might be made out of this castle of the popes ; and 
there ought to be a ghost in every room, and droves 
of them in some of the rooms ; for there have been 
murders here in the gross and in detail, as well hun- 
dreds of years ago, as no longer back than the French 
Eevolution, when there was a great massacre in one 
of the courts. Traces of this bloody business were 
visible in actual stains on the wail only a few years 
ago. 

Returning to the room of the concierge, who, being 
a little stiff with age, had sent an attendant round 
with US, instead of accompanying us in person, he 
showed us a picture of Rienzi, the last of the Roman 
tribunes, who was once a prisoner here. On a table, 
beneath the picture, stood a little vase of earthenware 
containing some silver coin. We took it as a hint, in 
the customary style of French elegance, that a fee 
should be deposited here, instead of being put into 
the hand of the concierge ; so the French gentleman 
deposited half a franc, and I, in my magnificence, 
twice as much. 

Hotel de T Europe, June Qitli. — We are still here. 
.... I have been daily to the Rocher des Doms, 
and have grown familiar with the old church on its 
declivit}^ I think I might become attached to it 
by seeing it often. A sombre old interior, with its 
heavy arches, and its roof vaulted like the top of 



1859.] FRANCE. 261 

a trunk; its stone gallery, with ponderous adorn- 
ments, running round three sides. I observe that it 
is a daily custom of the old women to say their 
prayers in concert, sometimes making a pilgrimage, 
as it were, from chapel to chapel. The voice of one 
of them is heard running through the series of peti- 
tions, and at intervals the voices of the others join and 
swell into a chorus, so that it is like a river connecting 
a series of lakes ; or, not to use so gigantic a simile, 
the one voice is like a thread, on which the beads of 
a rosary are strung. 

One day two priests came and sat down beside 
these prayerful women, and joined in their petitions. 
I am inclined to hope that there is something genuine 
in the devotion of these old women. 

The view from the top of the Rocher des Doms (a 
contraction of Domin^s) grows upon me, and is truly 
magnificent ; a vast mountain-girdled plain, illumi- 
nated by the far windings and reaches of the Rhone. 
The river is here almost as turbid as the Tiber itself; 
but, I remember, in the upper part of its course the 
waters are beautifully transparent. A powerful rush 
is indicated by the swirls and eddies of its broad 
surface. 

Yesterday was a race day at Avignon, and appar- 
ently almost the whole population and a great many 
strangers streamed out of the city gate nearest our 
hotel, on their way to the race-course. There were 
many noticeable figures that might come well into a 
French picture or description; but only one remains 
in my memory, — a young man with a wooden leg. 



262 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1859. 

setting off for the course — a walk of several miles, 
I believe — with prodigious courage and alacrity, 
flourishing his wooden leg with an air and grace that 
seemed to render it positively flexible. The crowd 
returned towards sunset, and almost all night long 
the streets and the whole air of the old town were 
full of song and merriment. There was a ball in a 
temporary structure, covered with an awning, in the 
Place d'Horloge, and a showman has erected his tent 
and spread forth his great painted canvases, announ- 
cing an anaconda and a sea-tiger to be seen. J 

paid four sous for admittance, and found that the 
sea-tiger was nothing but a large seal, and the ana- 
conda altogether a myth. 

I have rambled a good deal about the town. Its 
streets are crooked and perplexing, and paved with 
round pebbles for the most part, which afford more 
uncomfortable pedestrianism than the pavement of 
Rome itself It is an ancient-looking place, with 
some large old mansions, but few that are individ- 
ually impressive ; though here and there one sees 
an antique entrance, a corner tower, or other bit of 
antiquity, that throws a venerable effect over the 
gray commonplace of past centuries. The town is 
not overclean, and often there is a kennel of un- 
happy odor. There appear to have been many more 
churches and devotional establishments under the an- 
cient dominion of the popes than have been kept 
intact in subsequent ages ; the tower and facade of 
a church, for instance, form the front of a carpen- 
ter's shop, or some such plebeian place. The church 



1859.] FRANCE. 263 

where Laura lay has quite disappeared, and her tomb 
along with it. The town reminds me of Chester, 
though it does not in the least resemble it, and is 
not nearly so picturesque. Like Chester, it is entirely 
surrounded by a wall ; and that of Avignon — though 
it has no delightful promenade on its top, as the 
wall of Chester has — is the more perfectly preserved 
in its mediaeval form, and the more picturesque of 

the two. J and I have once or twice walked 

nearly round it, commencing from the gate of Quelle, 
which is very near our hotel. From this point it 
stretches for a considerable distance along by the 
river, and here there is a broad promenade, with 
trees, and blocks of stone for seats ; on one side " the 
arrowy Rhone," generally carrying a cooling breeze 
along with it ; on the other, the gray wall, with its 
battlements and machicolations, impending over what 
was once the moat, but which is now full of careless 
and untrained shrubbery. At intervals there are 
round towers swelling out from the wall, and rising 
a little above it. After about half a mile along the 
river-side the wall turns at nearly right angles, and 
still there is a wide road, a shaded walk, a boulevard ; 
and at short distances are cafes, with their little round 
tables before the door, or small shady nooks of shrub- 
bery. So numerous are these retreats and pleasaunces 
that I do not see how the little old town can support 
them all, especially as there are a great many cafes 
within the walls. I do not remember seeing any sol- 
diers on guard at the numerous city gates, but there 
is an office in the side of each gate for levying the 



264 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l859. 

octroi, and old women are sometimes on guard 
there. 

This morning, after breakfast, J and I crossed 

the suspension-bridge close by the gate nearest our 
hotel, and walked to the ancient town of Villeneuve, 
on the other side of the Rhone. The first bridge 
leads to an island, from the farther side of which 
another very long one, with a timber foundation, 
accomplishes the passage of- the other branch of the 
Rhone. There was a good breeze on the river, but 
after crossing it we found the rest of the walk exces- 
sively hot. This town of Yilleneuve is of very ancient 
orio-in, and owes its existence, it is said, to the famous 
holiness of a female saint, w^hich gathered round her 
abode and burial-place a great many habitations of 
people who reverenced her. She was the daughter 
of the King of Saragossa, and I presume she chose 
this site because it was so rocky and desolate. After- 
wards it had a long mediaeval historj^; and in the 
time of the Avignon popes, the cardinals, regretful of 
their abandoned Roman villas, built pleasure-houses 
here, so that the town was called Villa Nuova. After 
they had done their best, it must have seemed to these 
poor cardinals but a rude and sad exchange for the 
Borghese, the Albani, the Pamfili Doria, and those 
other perfectest results of man's luxurious art. And 
probably the tradition of the Roman villas had really 
been kept alive, and extant examples of them all the 
way downward from the times of the empire. But 
this Villeneuve is the stoniest, roughest town that 
can be imagined. There are a few large old houses, 



1859.] FRANCE- 265 

to be sure, l^ut tj.uilt oi) a Jine with shabby village dwell- 
ings and barns, and so presenting little but samples 
q{ magiiificent shabbijiess. Perhaps I might have 
found traces of old splendor if I had sought for them ; 
but, not having the history of the place in my mind, I 
passed through its scrambling streets without imagin- 
ing that Priuces of the Church had once made their 
abode here. The inhabitants now are peasants, or 
chipfly such ; though, for aught I know, some of the 
French noblesse may burrow in these palaces that 
look so like hovels. 

A large church, with p, massive tower, stands near 
the centre of the toyn ; and, of course, I did not fail 
|o enter its arched door, — a pointed arch, with many 
frames and rnouldings, one within another. An old 
woman was at hei* devotions, and several others came 
in and knelt during my stay there. It was quite an 
interesting interior ; a long nave, with six pointed 
arches on each side, beneath which were as many 
chapels. The walls were rich with pictures, not only 
in the chapels, but up and down the nave, above the 
arches. There were gilded virgins, too, and much 
other quaint device that produced an effect that I 
rather liked than otherwise. At the end of the church, 
farthest from the high altar, there were four columns 
of exceedingly rich marble, and a good deal more of 
such precious material was wrought into the chapels 
and altars. There was an old stone seat, also, of 
some former pope or prelate. The church was dim 
enough to cause the lamps in the shrines to become 
points of vivid light, and, looking from end to end, it 

VOL. II. 12 



266 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1859. 

was a long, venerable, tarnished. Old- World vista, not 
at all tampered with by modem taste. 

We now went on our way through the village, and, 
emerging from a gate, went clambering towards the 
castle of St. Andre, which stands, perhaps, a quarter 
of a mile beyond it. This castle was built by Philip 
le Bel, as a restraint to the people of Avignon in 
extending their power on this side of the Rhone. We 
happened not to take the most direct way, and so 
approached the castle on the farther side and were 
obliged to go nearly round the hill on which it stands, 
before striking into the path which leads to its gate. 
It crowns a very bold and difficult hill, directly above 
the Rhone, opposite to Avignon, — which is so far off 
that objects are not minutely distinguishable, — and 
looking down upon the long, straggling town of Ville- 
neuve. It must have been a place of mighty strength, 
in its day. Its ramparts seem still almost entire, as 
looked upon from without, and when, at length, we 
climbed the rough, rocky pathway to the entrance, we 
found the two vast round towers, with their battle- 
mented summits and arched gateway between them, 
just as perfect as they could have been five hundred 
or more years ago. Some external defences are now, 
however, in a state of ruin; and there are only the 
remains of a tower, that once arose between the two 
round towers, and was apparently much more elevated 
than they. A little in front of the gate was a monu- 
mental cross of stone ; and in the arch, between the 
two round towers, were two little boys at play ; and 
an old woman soon showed herself, but took no notice 



1859.] FRANCE. 267 

of us. Casting our eyes within the gateway, we saw 
what looked a rough village street, betwixt old houses 
built ponderously of stone, but having far more the 
aspect of huts than of castle-halls. They were evi- 
dently the dwellings of peasantry, and people engaged 
in rustic labor; and no doubt they have burrowed into 
the primitive structures of the castle, and as they found 
convenient, have taken their crumbling materials to 
build barns and farm-houses. There was space and 
accommodation for a very considerable population ; 
but the men were probably at work in the fields, and 
the only persons visible were the children aforesaid, 
and one or two old women bearing bundles of, twigs on 
their backs. They showed no curiosity respecting us, 
and though the wide space included within the castle- 
rampart seemed almost full of habitations ruinous or 
otherwise, I never found such a solitude in any ruin 
before. It contrasts very favorably in this particular 
with English castles, where, though you do not find 
rustic villages within the warlike enclosure, there is 
always a padlocked gate, always a guide, and generally 
half a dozen idle tourists. But here was only antiq- 
uity, with merely the natural growth of fungous human 
life upon it. 

We went to the end of the castle court and sat 
down, for lack of other shade, among some inhospita- 
ble nettles that grew close to the wall. Close by us 
was a great gap in the ramparts, — it may have been 
a breach which was once stormed through ; and it 
now afforded us an airy and sunny glimpse of distant 
liills J sketched part of the broken wall 



208 FRENCH AND IT^^U^N NOTE-BOOKS. [l859. 

i^fhich, by .tl\e by, did not seem to me nearly so thick 
p tjie ^alls ,Qf Eixgligh castles. Then we returned 
t^iroiigh the gate^ ^nd I stopped, rather impatiently, 
under the hot sun, ^hile J--— drew the joutjine of 
tj^e tvro round towerg. This dpne^ we res;uned o^r 
5vay bpmeward, ^ifter drinking from a yery deep well 
close by the scjuar^ tower pf Philip) h Bel. Thence 
^e w,en,t melting t^rougj^ the ^unshin^, wbich l^eat 
upward as pitilessjy fropa the ^hjl^e rpad |i| it bja?^ 
downwards from the sky. , . . , 

HdUl cFAn^leterre, June llth. — W^ left Avi^pn 
on Tuesday, 7th, and topk the rail to yal^nce, where 
we arrived between fpur ^d five, and put up at the 
Hotel de la Poste, an ai^cient house, with dirty flqors 
and dirt generally, but otherwise comfortable enoygh. 
.... Valence is a stately old town, full pf tall 
houses and irregular streets. We found a Cathedral 
there, not very large, but with a high and venerabje 
interior^ a nave supported by tall pillars, from ,thp 
height of which spring arches. This loftiness is char- 
acteristic of French churches, as distinguished from 

those of Italy "JVe likewise saw, close by the 

Cathedral, a large monument with four arched en- 
trances meeting beneath a vaulted rpof^ bu,t^ on in- 
quiry of an old priest and other persons, we could get 
no account of it, except that it was a tomb, and of 
:^nknown antiquity. The architecture seiemed plassic^ 
and ^et it had some Gothic jp^eculiaritie?, and it was ^ 



1859.J SWffZERLAND. 269 

reverend and beautiful objeci Had I wrifien up my 
journal while ihe town was fr6sh in my rememHrance, 
I mighi have found much to desbribe ; but a succes- 
sion of other objects have obliterated most of the 
impression^ I have received here. Our railway ride 
to Valence was intolerably hot. I have felt noth- 
ing tike it since leaving America, and that is so long 
ago that the terrible discomfort was just as good as 
new 

We left Valence at four, and came that afternoon 
to Lyons, still along the Rhone. Either the waters of 
this fiver assum6 a iraiispafehcy in winter which 
they lose in summer, or 1 was mistaken in thiiiking 
thern tfahspafent on our fofmef journey. They are 
how tiifbid ; but the hue does riot suggest the idea of 
a f uririing mud-puddle, as the water of the Tiber does. 
No streams, however, are so beautiful in ihe qualify 
of their waters as the clear, brown fivers of New Erig- 
laiid. The scenery along this part of the Rhohe, as 
we have found all the way ifom Marseilles, is very 
fine and inipfessive ; old vlllagfes, rocky cliffs, castel- 
lated steeps, quaihi chateaux, arid a thousand other 
iritefestirig' object^; 

We amv^d at Lyons at five o'clock, and #eri£ io 
the Hotel de rUriivefse, to which we had been fecom- 
riiended by our good hostess at Avignon. The day 

had become showefy, but J and I stfolled dhdiit 

a little before nightfall, and saw the geriefal character- 
istics of the place. Lyons is a city of ve^ stately 
aspect, hardly irifefiof to P^afis ; for it has fegulaf 
fetfeets of lofty liouses, arid iriiriiense sqiiafes ptanted 



270 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l859. 

witli trees, and adorned with statues and fountains. 
New edifices of great splendor are in process of erec- 
tion; and on the opposite side of the Rhone, where 
the site rises steep and high, there are structures 
of older date, that have an exceedingly picturesque 
effect, looking down upon the narrow town. 

The next morning I went out with J in quest 

of my bankers, and of the American Consul ; and as I 
had forgotten the directions of the waiter of the hotel, 
I of course went astray, and saw a good deal more of 
Lyons than I intended. In my wanderings I crossed 
the Rhone, and found myself in a portion 6f the city 
evidently much older than that with which I had pre- 
viously made acquaintance ; narrow, crooked, irreg- 
ular, and rudely paved streets, full of dingy business 
and bustle, — the city, in short, as it existed a century 
ago, and how much earlier I know not. Above rises 
that lofty elevation of ground which I before noticed ; 
and the glimpses of its stately old buildings through 
the openings of the street were very picturesque. 
Unless it be Edinburgh, I have not seen any other 
city that has such striking features. Altogether un- 
awares, immediately after crossing the bridge, we 
came upon the Cathedral ; and the grand, time-black- 
ened Gothic front, with its deeply arched entrances, 
seemed to me as good as anything I ever saw, — un- 
expectedly more impressive than all the ruins of Rome. 
I could but merely glance at its interior ; so that its 
noble height and venerable space, filled with the dim, 
consecrated light of pictured windows, recur to me as 
a vision. And it did me good to enjoy the awfulness 



1859.] SWITZERLAND. 271 

and sanctity of Gothic architecture again, after so long 
shivering in classic porticos 

We now recrossed the river The Frank 

methods and arrangements in matters of business 
seem to be excellent, so far as effecting the proposed 
object is concerned ; but there is such an inexorable 
succession of steel-wrought forms, that life is not long 
enough for so much accuracy. The stranger, too, 
goes blindfold through all these processes, not know- 
ing what is to turn up next, till, when quite in 
despair, he suddenly finds his business mysteriously 
accomplished 

We left Lyons at four o'clock, taking the railway 
for Geneva. The scenery was very striking through- 
out the journey ; but I allowed the hills, deep valleys, 
high impending cliffs, and whatever else I saw along 
the road, to pass from me without an ink-blot. We 

reached Geneva at nearly ten o'clock It is 

situated partly on low, flat ground, bordering the 
lake, and behind this level space it rises by steep, 
painfully paved streets, some of which can hardly be 
accessible by wheeled carriages. The prosperity of 
the town is indicated by a good many new and splen- 
did edifices, for commercial and other purposes, in 
the vicinity of the lake ; but intermixed with these 
there are many quaint buildings of a stem gray 
color, and in a style of architecture that I prefer 
a thousand times to the monotony of Italian streets. 
Immensely high, red roofs, with windows in them, 
produce an effect that delights me. They are as 
ugly, perhaps, as can well be conceived, but very 



272 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1859. 

striking and individual. At each corner of these 
ancient houses fi-equently is a tower, the roof of 
which rises in a square pyramidal form, or, if the 
lower be round, in a round pyramidal form. Arched 
passages, gloomy and grimy, pass from one street to 
another. The lower town creeps with busy life, and 
swarms like an ant-hill; but if you climb the half- 
precipitous streets, you find yourself among ancient 
arid stately mansions, high roofed, with a strange 
aspect of grandeur about them, looking as if they 
might still be tenanted by such old magnates as 
dwelt in them centuries ago. There is also a Cathe- 
dral, the oldfer portion exceedingly fine; but it has 
befen adoi"hed at Some modern epoch with a Grecian 
portico, — good in itself, but absurdly out of keeping 
witb the edifice which it prefaces. This being a 
JProtestant country, the doors were all shut, — an 
ihhospitality that made me half a Catholic. It is 
fiinny enough that a stranger generally profits by all 
that is Worst for the inhabitants of the country where 
he himself is merely a visitor. Despotism makes 
things all the pleasantei* for the stranger. Cathol- 
icism lends itself admirably to his purposes. 

There are public gardens (one^ at least) in Geneva. 
.... ]^othing struck me so much, I think, as the 
colbi' of the Rhone, as it flows under the bridges in 
the tower town. It is absolutely miraculous, and, 
beaiitiful as it is, suggests the idea that the tubs of a 
thousand dyers have emptied their liquid indigo into 
the strekin. When orice you have conquered and 
thrust out this idea, it is an inexpressible delight to 



i85b.] swMeSland. §7S 

look down mio Ihis intense, B'ri^hiljr ti^nSpafen^ 
bitie, iMt htirri^ behesttli yoti With, the spied of d 

*the fetiops of Geneva af§ ffefy tempting to ^ tfav= 
eller, being full of Siich little knick-knacks fts h% 
would b^ glad to ekffy dwaj iii EfieMoiy of ibe pla^e" : 
wotidei-ful carvings in ^ood arid ivory, done with 
exquisite taste and skill; j^elry that seems vefy 
cheap, but is dSubiless deaf enotifhj if you estiiiidte 
it by the stolid gold thai goes into its marinfactufe ; 
watches, ab6v6 sill things else, for a thiM of a qiiaf- 
tef of ihe ^fice that 6iie pa;^s iii Eflflftfid, looking 
just as well, too, and probSbly |)erfofming the -^hoie 
of a watch's dutjr as tincriticis^bly. The Swis^ people 
af© frugal arid iriexpefisive in their btrn fejibits, 1 
beliete, plain arid sirilple, arid careless of orndmeni* 
but they seem to feckori on other people'^ fependirig a 
great de&l of riioney for gfeWgslws. We bought soirie 
^f their wooden truriipery, arid like^fise a watch fof 
tJ '- '^ .... Next to watches, jewelfy, arid Wood- 
eatvirig, I should s^f iHkt dipfs W6re 6rid of the 
pHri6ip^l articleal of coriimerce iri Gferi^va. Cigaf^ 
shops pteserit themselves at every Step of t#o, knd 
id i. f eaSdnable fat^, ihet§ being no dritiei§, I beli61r6,- 
on imjlorted g66d§. T!Mf<e Wft§ no ex&riSiriati6n 6f 
oiii* tfririk§ ori afflval,- nof Mf questidri§ aSked 6i4 th&t 
scof^. 

VILLSNEUVE. 

Itdtei de Byroih, June 12?^.-- Yefetcrddf aftetti66ti 
we left GerieVa by k steamef, Starting ft6m the qua^ 

12* R 



274 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1859. 

at only a short distance from our hotel. The fore- 
noon had been showery ; but the sun now came out 
very pleasantly, although there were still clouds and 
mist enough to give infinite variety to the mountain 
scenery. At the commencement of our voyage the 
scenery of the lake was not incomparably superior to 
that of other lakes on which I have sailed, as Lake 
Windermere, for instance, or Loch Lomond, or our 
own Lake Champlain. It certainly grew more grand 
and beautiful, however, till at length I felt that I had 
never seen anything worthy to be put beside it. The 
southern shore has the grandest scenery; the great 
hills on that side appearing close to the water's edge, 
and after descending, with headlong slope, directly 
from their rocky and snow-streaked summits down 
into the blue water. Our course lay nearer to the 
northern shore, and all our stopping-places were on 
that side. The first was Coppet, where Madame de 
Stael or her father, or both, were either born or 
resided or died, I know not which, and care very 
little. It is a picturesque village, with an old church, 
and old, high-roofed, red-tiled houses, the whole 
looking as if nothing in it had been changed for 
many, many years. All these villages, at several of 
which we stopped momentarily, look delightfully un- 
modified by recent fashions. There is the church, 
with its tower crowned by a pyramidal roof, like an 
extinguisher ; then the chateau of the former lord, 
half castle and half dwelling-house, with a round 
tower at each comer, pyramid topped ; then, perhaps, 
the ancient town-house or Hotel de Ville, in an open 



1859.] SWITZERLAND. 275 

paved square j and perhaps the largest mansion in the 
whole village will have been turned into a modern inn, 
but retaining all its venerable characteristics of high, 
steep sloping roof, and antiquated windows. Scatter 
a delightful shade of trees among the houses, throw 
in a time-worn monument of one kind or another, 
swell out the delicious blue of the lake in front, and 
the delicious green of the sunny hillside sloping up 
and around this closely congregated neighborhood 
of old, comfortable houses, and I do not know what 
more I can add to this sketch. Often there was an 
insulated house or cottage, embowered in shade, and 
each seeming like the one only spot in the wide world 
where two people that had good consciences and 
loved each other could spend a happy life. Half- 
ruined towers, old historic castles, these, too, we 
saw. And all the while, on the other side of the 
lake, were the high hills, sometimes dim, sometimes 
black, sometimes green, with gray precipices of stone, 
and often snow-patches, right above the warm sunny 
lake whereon we were sailing. 

We passed Lausanne, which stands upward, on the 
slope of the hill, the tower of its Cathedral forming 
a conspicuous object. We mean to visit this to- 
morrow; so I may pretermit further mention of it 
here. We passed Vevay and Clarens, which, me- 
thought, was particularly picturesque; for now the 
hills had approached close to the water on the north- 
ern side also, and steep heights rose directly above 
the little gray church and village; and especially I 
remember a rocky cliff which ascends into a rounded 



tfQ FRENCH AND ifALiA':^ l^OTE-BOOKS. [\&b 

pyramid, insulated from all other peaks and ridges, 
feiit if 1 could perform the absolute impossibility of 
getting one single outline of the scene into words, 
thei-e woiild be all the color wanting, the light, the 
haze, which spiritualizes it, and moreover niakes a 
thousand and a thousand scenes out of that single 
one. Clarens, however, has still another interest for 
me ; for I found myself more affected by it, as the 
scene "olf the love of St. Preux and Julia, tkan I have 
often been by scenes of poetry and romance. I read 
Rousseau^s romance with great sympathy, when I was 
hardly ihbfe than a boy; ten years ago, or there- 
abouts, I tried to read it again without success ; but 
I Ihink, iroin my feeling of yesterday, that it still 
retains its hold upon my imagination. 

Farthef- oiiwaM, we saw a white, ancieiit-looking 
group of towisrs, beneath a mountain, which was so 
high, and rushed so precipitately down upon this pile 
of tiiildirig as quite to dwarf it ; besides which, its 
diiigy whiteness had not a very picturesque effect. 
Nevertheless, this was the Castle of Chillbn. It 
appears to sit i-ight upoii the water, and doe's not rise 
fety loftily above it. I was disap{)6iiited in its as- 
pect, haviiig imagined this famous castle as feit'udted 
\ip6ii a rock, a hundred, or, tor kiignt I kiiow, a 
tteuSknd feet iibbve the surface of the lake ; but it 
is quit^ as iinpre'ssive a fact -^ supposing it to blB true 
— that the water is eight hundred feet deep at its 
base. By this time, the mountains had takieh the 
teaiitiifui lake into their deepest heart ; thdy girdled 
it quite i-ouud with their gl^kndeur and beaiity, and. 



1859.] Iwififi^iANfJ. §77 

b§ih^ i^ble ib do nd more for it, they here withheld 
it from extending any farther ; and here otir voyagd 
fcath6 to an ehd. I have liever beheld aiiy sc^ne so 
(Bxquisltfe ; hor do I ask of Heaven to show me any 
iovelief" or nobler dhe, biit dtily to give me such depth 
and breadth of Syiripaihy with iiature, that 1 m^y 
Worthily eiijoy this. It is beauty more than enough 
fot- poor, perishable nibrtals. If this be earth, Wh^t 
haust h^kteii bfe ! 

it Was nearly §ight o'clock wheii we arrived ; knA 
theii We had a walk of ht least a ihile td the tlotei 

B^roh t fbfgtit td m'ehtidh iMi in th^ lattei- 

pjlrt df otir vdyage ther^ %a§ d ShdWer in soine ^^rt 
of the h^y, and though hond of it Mi tipon us, \^d 
hdid the benefit bf thds^ gentle t^afS in a i^ainboW, 
which drched itself kcfoss th§ lakb from moiiiitaiii to 
mountain, So that our track lay directly under this 
tntimphal ^rch. We took it as a good omen, hdi^ 
Wie^ we discoiifaged, though, after thd rainbow had 
rahished, a few sprinkles df the shdwef caiiie ddwh. 

Wd fbiiiid the Hdtel Byi*on very gtand indeed, aiid 
k godd bn6 tod; There wa^ a beautiful ftiddnlight dn 
the lake atid hills, but we contented dufSeltes with 
Iddking but df bur lofty WirtddW, WhBrlcej liklWise, 
#e haa a sideldh^ glarice at th6 white battlehientS 
of Chilldn, not mote thafi a mild off, oti th6 water'^ 
edge. The icastle is wbfuUy iti need of k pedeStial. 
If its site W^Itg elevatisd td a height eqiial tb its own, 
it would caake a far better appearance. As it how 
is, it lodk^, td speak profanely of What poetry has 
6oii^i6ci*atedj When siieri from the water, or along thei 



278 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1859. 

shore of the lake, very like an old whitewashed fac- 
tory or mill. 

This morning I walked to the Castle of Chillon 

with J f who sketches everything he sees, from a 

wild flower or a carved chair to a castle or a range 
of mountains. The morning had sunshine thinly 
scattered through it; but, nevertheless, there was a 
continual sprinkle, sometimes scarcely perceptible, 
and then again amounting to a decided drizzle. The 
road, which is built along on a little elevation above 
the lake shore, led us past the Castle of Chillon ; and 
we took a side-path, which passes still nearer the 
castle gate. The castle stands on an isthmus of 
gravel, permanently connecting it with the main- 
land. A wooden bridge, covered with a roof, passes 
from the shore to the arched entrance ; and beneath 
this shelter, which has wooden walls as well as roof 
and floor, we saw a soldier or gendarme who seemed 
to act as warder. As it sprinkled rather more freely 
than at first, I thought of appealing to his hospitality 
for shelter from the rain, but concluded to pass on. 

The castle makes a far better appearance on a 
nearer view, and from the land, than when seen at 
a distance, and from the water. It is built of stone, 
and seems to have been anciently covered with 
plaster, which imparts the whiteness to which Byron 
does much more than justice, when he speaks of 
" Chillon's snow-white battlements." There is a lofty 
external wall, with a cluster of round towers about 
it, each crowned with its pyramidal roof of tiles, 
and from the central portion of the castle rises a 



1859.] SWITZERLAND. 279 

square tower, also crowned with its own pyramid 
to a considerably greater height than the circum- 
jacent ones. The whole are in a close cluster, and 
make a fine picture of ancient strength when seen at 
a proper proximity ; for I do not think that distance 
adds anything to the effect. There are hardly any 
windows, or few, and very small ones, except the 
loopholes for arrows and for the garrison of the 
castle to peep from on the sides towards the water ; 
indeed, there are larger windows at least in the upper 
apartments; but in that direction, no doubt, the 
castle was considered impregnable. Trees here and 
there on the land side grow up against the castle 
wall, on one part of which, moreover, there was a 
green curtain of ivy spreading from base to battle- 
ment. The walls retain their machicolations, and 
I should judge that nothing had been [altered], nor 
any more work been done upon the old fortress than 
to keep it in singularly good repair. It was formerly 
a castle of the Duke of Savoy, and since his sway 
over the country ceased (three hundred years at 
least), it has been in the hands of the Swiss govern- 
ment, who still keep some arms and ammunition 
there. 

We passed on, and found the view of it better, as 
we thought, from a farther point along the road. 
The rain-drops began to spatter down faster, and we 
took shelter under an impending precipice, where 
the ledge of rock had been blasted and hewn away 
to form the road. Our refuge was not a very con- 
venient and comfortable one, so we took advantage 



SS6 FRENCH AN6 ITALIAN !^6TE-B00KS. [1859. 

of tHe partial cessation of tEe shower to tiifn hom^^ 
ward, tut had not gone far when we inet mamma 
aiid all Her tfairi. As we were close by the castlfe 
eiitfance, we tiio tight it advisable to seek admission, 
though rather doubtful whether the ^wiss geridafriiei 
might hot deerh it a sin to let tis into the castld ofl 
Siihday. feiit he very readily admitted lis under his 
covered drawbridge, and called ah old mah fironi 
Vithih the fortress to show us whatever was to bS 
seeii; ¥his latter personage was a staid, rstther gfini, 
ah(l dalviiiistic-lbbkihg old w6i*thy; but he received 
lis without scruple, and forthwith proceeded to ushei^ 
lis. into a range of niost dismal diihgeohs, extending 
along the basement of the castle, on a level witH 
the siirfiice of the lake. Fir^t, if I remember afightj 
we came to what he said had been a chapel, arid 
which, at ail events, looked like aii aisld of one, of 
rather such a crypt a§ I have seen beheglth a c^tlie'- 
dfal, being a successi6n of hiassive pillarS sUppoftirig 
groined arches, — ^ very S,dmirable pieee of giobmjf 
Gothic architecture. Next, we 6ame to a vei^ dark 
compattmSnt of th§ s^fiie diitigeoTi fdtige, whete hi 
pointed to a ^ort of bed, 6r wh^t ihight ^erve tot 
a bed, hewn in the solid rock, and this, our giiidS 
said, had been the last sleepibg-|)lace of cbndeirihed 
prisoners oil the iiight befbre their eiectititJfl. Th6 
liext eom|)aftmerit wks still duskiet and dismallei" 
than the last, and he bade us fcast but eyes tip ihtd 
the obscurity atid 6ee a beam, -where the condemned 
ones used to be hdhged. I looked and looked, arid 
closed my eyes so as to see the clearef in this homble 



1859.] SWITZERLAND. 281 

duskiness on opening them again. Finally, I thougtit 
1 discerned the accursed beam, and the rest of the 
party were certain that they saw it. Next teyond 
this, I think, was a stone staircase, steep, rudely 
cut, and narrow, down which the condemned were 
brought to death; and beyond this, still on the 
same basement range of the castle, a low and nar- 
row [corridor] through which we passed, and saw a 
row of seven massive pillars, supporting two paral- 
lel series oi groined arches, like those in the chapel 
which we first entered. This was Bonnivard^s prison, 
and the scene of Byron's poem. 

The arches are dimly lighted by narrow loop- 
holes, pierced through the immensely thick wall, 
but at such a height above the ^oor that we could 
catch no glimpse of land or water, or scarcely oi the 
sky. The prisoner of Chillon could not possibly 
have seen the island to which Byron alludes, and 
which is a little way from the shore, exactly opposite 
the town of Villeneuve. There was light fenough in 
this long, gray, vaulted room, to show us that all the 
pillars were inscribed with the names of visitors, 
among which I saw no interesting one, except thai 
of Byron himself, which is cut, in letters an ihcn 
long Or more, into one o^ the pillars ne:it to that 
to which fenhivard was chained. The letters are 
deep enough to i-emain in the {)illar as long as the 
castle stands. !feyron seems to have had a fancy for 
recording his name in this and similar ways; as 
witness the record which I saw on a tree of Newstead 
Abbey. In Bonnivard's pillar there still remains 



282 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1859. 

an iron ring, at the height of perhaps three feet from 
the ground. His chain was fastened to this ring, 
and his only freedom was to walk round this pillar, 
about which he is said to have worn a path in the 
stone pavement of the dungeon ; but as the floor is 
now covered with earth of gravel, I could not satisfy 
myself whether this be true. Certainly six yeaa-s, 
with nothing else to do in them save to walk round 
the pillar, might well suffice to wear away the rock, 
even with naked feet. This column, and all the 
columns, were cut and hewn in a good style of 
architecture, and the dungeon arches are not with- 
out a certain gloomy beauty. On Bonnivard's pillar, 
as well as on all the rest, were many names inscribed ; 
but I thought better of Byron's delicacy and sensi- 
tiveness for not cutting his name into that very pillar. 
Perhaps, knowing nothing of Bonnivard's story, he 
did not know to which column he was chained. 

Emerging from the dungeon-vaults, our guide led 
us through other parts of the castle, showing us the 
Duke of Savoy's kitchen, with a fireplace at least 
twelve feet long; also the judgment-hall, or some 
such place, hung round with the coats of arms of 
some officers or other, and having at one end a 
wooden post, reaching from floor to ceiling, and 
having upon it the marks of fire. By means of this 
post, contumacious prisoners were put to a dreadful 
torture, being drawn up by cords and pulleys, while 
their limbs were scorched by a fire underneath. We 
also saw a chapel or two, one of which is still in 
good and sanctified condition, and was to be used 



1859.] SWITZERLAND. 283 

this very day, our guide told us, for religious pur- 
poses. We saw, moreover, the Duke's private cham- 
ber, with a part of the bedstead on which he used 
to sleep, and be haunted with horrible dreams, no 
doubt, and the ghosts of wretches whom he had 
tortured and hanged ; likewise the bedchamber of 
his duchess, that had in its window two stone seats, 
where, directly over the head of Bonnivard, the 
ducal pair might look out on the beautiful scene 
of lake and mountains, and feel the warmth of the 
blessed sun. Under this window, the guide said, the 
water of the lake is eight hundred feet in depth ; an 
immense profundity, indeed, for an inland lake, but 
it is not very difficult to believe that the mountain 
at the foot of which Chillon stands may descend so 
far beneath the water. In other parts of the lake 
and not distant, more than nine hundred feet have 
been sounded. I looked out of the duchess's window, 
and could certainly see no appearance of a bottom in 
the light blue water. 

The last thing that the guide showed us was a 
trap-door, or opening, beneath a crazy old floor. 
Looking down into this aperture we saw three stone 
steps, which we should have taken to be the beginning 
of a flight of stairs that descended into a dungeon, or 
series of dungeons, such as we had already seen. But 
inspecting them more closely, we saw that the third 
step terminated the flight, and beyond was a dark 
vacancy. Three steps a person would grope down, 
planting his uncertain foot on a dimly seen stone; 
the fourth step would be in the empty air. The guide 



^84 FRENCH AND ITALIAN KOTE-BOOKS. 

tolcf lis tliat it used to Be tHe practice to bring 
prisoners hither, under pretence of committing thein! 
to a dungeon, and make them go down the thfee 
steps and that fourth fatal one, and they would hever- 
more he heard of; but at the bottom o^ the pit there 
would be a dead body, arid in due tinie a mouldy 
[Skeleton, which would rattle beneath the body of the 
next prisoner that fell. I do not believe that it was 
anything more than a secret dungeon tor state pris- 
oners whom it was out o^ the question either to set 
at liberty or bring to public trial. The depth of the 
pit Was about forty-five feet. Gazing intently down, 
I saw a faint gleam of light at the bottom, apparently 
coining from some other aperture than the trap-dooi* 
over which We were beridiiig, so that it must have 
teen contemplated to supply it with ligTit and air in 
such degree as to support huinah life. U de- 
clared she saw a skeleton at the bottom • Miss S 

fhoiight she saw a hartdj but I saw only the diiii 
gleam of light. 

There ar6 two or thf^e i;<)urts in the castle, but of 
no great sizef; We were now led across one of theiri, 
and dismissed Out of the ai-ched eritraiice by which 
ite had 6om§ iii. Wfe found the gendarme still keep- 
ing watch on hi^ roofed drawbridge, and as there was 
the sariie gentle shower that had been effusing itself 
ali the rhorhihg, we availed oUrselves of th^ shelter, 
ihore especially as there were some curiosities to ex- 
amiiie. Th^^se consisted chiefly of wbod carvings, — 
^licii as little figures iii the national costiitne, b6xe§ 
with wreaths of felidge upon them, pap^r kiiives, f ne 



1859.] SWITZERLAND. 285 

chamois goat admirably well represented. We at first 
hesitated to make any advances towards trade with 
t^e gendarme because it was Sunday, and we fancied 
there might be a Galvinistic scruple on his part about 
turning a penny on the Sabbath ; but from the little 
I know of the Swiss character, I suppose they would 
be as ready as any other men to sell not only such 
matters, but even their own souls, or any smaller — or 
shall we say greater — thing on Sunday or at any 
other time. So we began to ask the prices of the 
articles, and met with no difl&culty in purchasing a 
salad spoon and fork, with pretty bas-reliefs carved on 
the handles, and a napkin-ring. For Rosebud's and 
our amusement, the gendarme now set a musical-box 
a going ; and as it played a pasteboard figure of a den- 
tist began to pull the tooth of a pasteboard patient, 
lifting the wretched simulacrum entirely from the 
ground, and keeping him in this hon-ible torture for 
ialf an hour. Meanwhile, mamma, Miss Shepard, 

U^ , and J-— — sat down all in a row on a bench 

and sketched the mountains ; and as the shower did 
not cease, though the sun most of the time shone 
brightly, they were kept actual prisoners of Chillon 
much longer than we wished to stay. 

We took advantage of the first cessation, — though 
still the drops came dimpling into the water that 
rippled against the pebbles beneath the bridge, — of 
the first partial cessation of the shower, to escape, and 
retiu-ned towards the hotel, with this kindliest of 

summer rains falling upon us most of the way 

In the afternoon ttie rain entirely ceased, and the 



286 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1859. 

weather grew delightfully radiant, and warmer than 

could well be borne in the sunshine. U and I 

walked to the village of Villeneuve, — a mile from the 
hotel, — and found a very commonplace little old town 
of one or two streets, standing on a level, and as unin- 
teresting as if there were not a hill within a hundred 
miles. It is strange what prosaic lines men thrust in 
amid the poetry of nature 

Hotel de V Angleterre, Geneva, June \ith. — Yester- 
day morning was very fine, and we had a pretty early 
breakfast at Hotel Byron, preparatory to leaving it. 
This hotel is on a magnificent scale of height and 
breadth, its staircases and corridors being the most 
spacious I have seen ; but there is a kind of meagre- 
ness in the life there, and a certain lack of heartiness, 
that prevented us from feeling at home. We were 
glad to get away, and took the steamer on our return 
voyage, in excellent spirits. Apparently it had been 
a cold night in the upper regions, for a great deal 
more snow was visible on some of the mountains than 
we had before observed ; especially a mountain called 
*' Diableries " presented a silver summit, and broad 
sheets and fields of snow. Nothing ever can have 
been more beautiful than those groups of mighty hills 
as we saw them then, with the gray rocks, the green 
slopes, the white snow-patches and crests, all to be 
seen at one glance, and the mists and fleecy clouds 
tumbling, rolling, hovering about their summits, fill- 
ing their lofty valleys, and coming down far towards 
the lower world, making the skyey aspects so intimate 



1859.] SWITZERLAND. 287 

'with the earthly ones, that we hardly knew whether 
we were sojourning in the material or spiritual world. 
It was like sailing through the sky, moreover, to be 
borne along on such water as that of Lake Leman, — 
the bluest, brightest, and profoundest element, the 
most radiant eye that the dull earth ever opened to 
see heaven withal. I am writing nonsense, but it is 
because no sense within my mind will answer the 
purpose. 

Some of these mountains, that looked at no such 
mighty distance, were at least forty or fifty miles off, 
and appeared as if they were near neighbors and 
friends of other mountains, from which they were 
really still farther removed. The relations into which 
distant points are brought, in a view of mountain 
scenery, symbolize the truth, which we can never judge 
within our partial scope of vision, of the relations 
which we bear to our fellow-creatures and human cir- 
cumstances. These mighty mountains think that 
they have nothing to do with one another, each seems 
itself its own centre, and existing for itself alone ; and 
yet, to an eye that can take them all in, they are evi- 
dently portions of one grand and beautiful idea, which 
could not be consummated without the lowest and 
the loftiest of them. I do not express this satisfacto- 
rily, but have a genuine meaning in it nevertheless. 

We passed again by Chillon, and gazed at it as 
long as it was distinctly visible, though the water 
view does no justice to its real picturesqueness, there 
being no towers nor projections on the side towards 
the lake, nothing but a wall of dingy white, with an 



2^ FRENCH AND ITALIAlf NOTE-BOOKS. [l859. 

indentation that lopks something like a gateway, 
^out ^n hour and a half brought us to Ouchy, the 
point where passengers land to take the omnibus to 
Lausanne. The ascent from Ouchy to Lausanne is a 
mile and a half, yhich it took the om^ibus nearly hajf 
an hour to accomplish. We left our shawls and car- 
pet-bags in the salle ct, manger of the Hotel Faucon, 
ajid set forth to find the Cathedral, the pinnacled 
tower of which is visible for a long distance up and 
down the lake. Prominent as it is, however, it is by 
»o means very easy tp find it while rambling through 
the intricate streets and declivities of the town itself, 
for Laus^nn^ i§ the tpwn, I should fancy, in all the 
WQrld the most difficult to go directly from one point 
to another. It is built on the declivity of a hill, 
adown which run several valleys or ravines, and over 
these the contiguity of houses extends, so that the 
communication is kept up by means of steep streets 
and sometimes long weary stairs, which must be sur- 
mounted and descended again in accomplishing a very 
moderate distance. In some inscrutable way we at 
last arrived at the Cathedral, which stands on a higher 
site than any other in Lausanne. It has a very ven- 
prable exterior, with all the Gothic grandeur which 
arched mullioned windows, deep portals, buttresses, 
towers, and pinnacles, gray with a thousand years, can 
give to architecture. After waiting awhile we ob- 
tained entrance by means of an old woman, who acted 
the part of sacristan, and was then showing the church 
to some other visitors. 

The interior disappointed us ; not but what it was 



1859.] SWITZERLAND. 289 

very beautiful, but I think the excellent repair that it 
was in, and the puritanic neatness with which it is 
kept, does much towards effacing the majesty and 
mystery that belong to an old church. Every inch 
of every wall and column, and all the mouldings and 
tracery, and every scrap of grotesque carving, had 
been washed with a drab mixture. There were like- 
wise seats all up and down the nave, made of pine 
wood, and looking very new and neat, just such seats 
as I shall see in a hundred meeting-houses (if ever I 
go into so many) in America. Whatever might be 
the reason, the stately nave, with its high-groined 
roof, the clustered columns and lofty pillars, the in- 
tersecting arches of the side-aisles, the choir, the 
armorial and knightly tombs that surround what was 
once the high altar, all produced far less effect tlian I 
could have thought beforehand. 

As it happened, we had more ample time and free- 
dom to inspect this Cathedral than any other that we 
have visited, for the old woman consented to go away 
and leave us there, locking the door behind her. The 
others, except Rosebud, sat down to sketch such 
portions as struck their fancy ; and for myself, I 
looked at the monuments^ of which some, being those 
of old knights, ladies, bishops, and a king, were 
curious from their antiquity ; and others are inter- 
esting as bearing memorials of English people, who 
have died at Lausanne in comparatively recent years. 
Then I went up into the pulpit, and tried, without 
success, to get into the stone gallery that runs all 
round the nave ; and I explored my way into various 

VOL. II. 13 - S 



290 FRENCH AND ITAUAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1859. 

side apartments of the Cathedral, which I found fitted 
up with seats for Sabbath schools, perhaps, or pos- 
sibly for meeting of elders of the Church. I opened 
the great Bible of the church, and found it to be a 
French version, printed at Lille some fifty years ago. 
There was also a liturgy, adapted, probably, to the 
Lutheran form of worship. In one of the side apart- 
ments I found a strong box, heavily clamped with 
iron, and having a contrivance, like the hopper of a 
mill, by which money could be turned into the top, 
while a double lock prevented its being abstracted 
again. This was to receive the avails of contribu- 
tions made in the church; and there were like- 
wise boxes, stuck on the ends of long poles, where- 
with the deacons could go round among the worship- 
pers, conveniently extending the begging-box to the 
remotest curmudgeon among them all. From the 
arrangement of the seats in the nave, and the labels 
pasted or painted on them, I judged that the women 
sat on one side and the men on the other, and the 
seats for various orders of magistrates, and for eccle- 
siastical and collegiate people, were likewise marked 
out. 

I soon grew weary of these investigations, and so 
did Eosebud and J , who essayed to amuse them- 
selves with running races together over the horizontal 
tombstones in the pavement of the choir, treading 
remorselessly over the noseless effigies of old digni- 
taries, who never expected to be so irreverently 
treated. I put a stop to their sport, and banished 
them to difierent parts of the Cathedral ; and by and 



1859.] SWITZERLAND. 291 

by, the old woman appeared again, and released us 
from durance 

While waiting for our dejeuner, we saw the people 
dining at the regular table d'hote of the hotel, and the 
idea was strongly borne in upon me, that the pro- 
fessional mystery of a male waiter is a very unmanly 
one. It is so absurd to see the solemn attentiveness 
with which they stand behind the chairs, the earnest- 
ness of their watch for any crisis that may demand 
their interposition, the gravity of their manner in 
performing some little office that the guest might 
better do for himself, their decorous and softly steps ; 
in short, as I sat and gazed at them, they seemed to 
me not real men, but creatures with a clerical aspect, 
engendered out of a very artificial state of society. 
When they are waiting on myself, they do not appear 
so absurd ; it is necessary to stand apart in order to 
see them properly. 

We left Lausanne — which was to us a tedious and 
weary place — before four o'clock. I should have liked 
well enough to see the house of Gibbon, and the 
garden in which he walked, after finishing ^'The 
Decline and Fall " ; but it could not be done without 
some trouble and inquiry, and as the house did not 
come to see me, I determined not to go and see the 
house. There was, indeed, a mansion of somewhat 
antique respectability, near our hotel, having a garden 
and a shaded terrace behind it, which would have 
answered accurately enough to tho idea of Gibbon's 
residence. Perhaps it was so ; far more probably 
not. 



292 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1R59. 

Our former voyages had been taken in the Hiron- 
delie ; we now, after broiling for some time in the 
sunshine by the lake-side, got on board of the Aigle^ 
No. 2. There were a good many passengers, the 
larger proportion of whom seemed to be English and 
American, and among the latter a large party of 
talkative ladies, old and young. The voyage was 
pleasant while we were protected from the sun by the 
awning overhead, but became scarcely agreeable when 
the sun had descended so low as to shine in our 
faces or on our backs. We looked earnestly for Mont 
Blanc, which ought to have been visible during a 
large part of our course ; but the clouds gathered 
themselves hopelessly over the portion of the sky 
where the great mountain lifted his white peak ; and 
we did not see it, and probably never shall. As to 
the meaner mountains, there were enough of them, 
and beautiful enough ; but we were a little weary, 

and feverish with the heat I think I had 

a head-ache, though it is so unusual a complaint 
with me, that I hardly know it when it comes. 
We were none of us sorry, therefore, when the Eagle 
brought us to the quay of Geneva, only a short dis- 
tance from our hotel 

To-day I wrote to Mr. Wilding, requesting him to 
secure passages for us from Liverpool on the 15th of 
next month, or 1st of August. It makes my heart 
thrill, half pleasantly, half otherwise ; so much nearer 
does this step seem to bring that home whence I 
have now been absent six years, and which, when I 
see it again, piay turn out to be not my home any 



1859.] FRANCE. 293 

longer. I likewise wrote to Bennoch, though I know 
not his present address; but I should deeply grieve 
to leave England without seeing him. He and 
Henry Bright are the only two men in England to 
whom I shall be much grieved to bid farewell; but 
to the island itself I cannot bear to say that word, 
as a finality. I shall dreamily hope to come back 
again at some indefinite time; rather foolishly per- 
haps, for it will tend to take the substance out of my 
life in my own land. But this, I suspect, is apt to 
be the penalty of those who stay abroad, and stay 
too long. 

HAVRE. 

Hotel Wheeler^ June 22c?. — We arrived at this 
hotel last evening from Paris, and find ourselves on 
the borders of the Petit Quay Notre Dame, with 
steamers and boats right under our windows, and 
all sorts of dock-business going on briskly. There 
are barrels, bales, and crates of goods ; there are old 
iron cannon for posts ; in short, all that belongs to the 

Wapping of a great seaport The American 

partialities of the guests [of this hotel] are consulted 
by the decorations of the parlor, in which hang two 
lithographs and colored views of New York, from 
Brooklyn and from Weehawken. The fashion of the 
house is a sort of nondescript mixture of Frank, 
English, and American, and is not disagreeable to us 
after our weary experience of Continental life. The 
abundance of the food is very acceptable in comparison 
with the meagreness of French and Italian meals ; and 



294 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [l859. 

last evening we supped nobly on cold roast beef and 
ham, set generously before us, in the mass, instead 
of being doled out in slices few and thin. The waiter 
has a kindly sort of manner, and resembles the 
steward of a vessel rather than a kndsman; and, 
in short, everything here has undergone a change, 
which might admit of very effective description. I 
may now as well give up all attempts at journalizing. 
So I shall say nothing of our journey across France 
from Geneva To-night we shall take our de- 
parture in a steamer for Southampton, whence we 
shall go to London; thence, in a week or two, to 
Liverpool; thence to Boston and Concord, there to 
enjoy — if enjoyment it prove — a little rest and a 
sense that we are at home, 

[More than four months were now taken up in 
writing "The Marble Faun" in great part at the 
seaside town of Redcar, Yorkshire, Mr. Hawthorne 
having concluded to remain another year in England, 
chiefly to accomplish that romance. In Redcar, where 
he remained till September or October, he wrote no 
journal, but only the book. He then went to Leam- 
ington, where he finished *'The Marble Faun" in 
March, and there is a little journalizing soon after 
leaving Redcar. — Ed.] 

ENGLAND. 

Leamington, November \ith, 1859. — J and I 

walked to Lillington the other day. Its little church 
was undergoing renovation when we were here two 



I860.] ENGLAND. ^95 

years ago, and now seems to be quite renewed, with 
the exception of its square, gray, battlemented tower, 
which has still the aspect of unadulterated antiquity. 

On Saturday J and I walked to Warwick by the 

old road, passing over the bridge of the Avon, within 
view of the castle. It is as fine a piece of English 
scenery as exists anywhere, — the quiet little river, 
shadowed with drooping trees, and, in its vista, the 
gray towers and long line of windows of the lordly 
castle, with a picturesquely varied outline; ancient 
strength, a little softened by decay 

The town of Warwick, I think, has been con- 
siderably modernized since I first saw it. The whole 
of the central portion of the principal street now 
looks modern, with its stuccoed or brick fronts of 
houses, and, in many cases, handsome shop windows. 
Leicester Hospital and its adjoining chapel still look 
venerably antique ; and so does a gateway that half 
bestrides the street. Beyond these two points on 
either side it has a much older aspect. The modern 
signs heighten the antique impression. 

February ^thy 1860. — Mr. and Mrs. Bennoch are 

staying for a little while at Mr. B- 's at Coventry, 

and Mr. B called upon us the other day, with 

Mr. Bennoch, and invited us to go and see the lions of 

Coventry j so yesterday U and I went. It was 

not my first visit, therefore I have little or nothing to 
record, unless it were to describe a ribbon-factory into 
which Mr. B took us. But I have rio compre- 
hension of machinery, and have only a confused recol- 
lection of an edifice of four or five stories, on each 



296 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1860. 

floor of which were rows of huge machines, all busy 
■with their iron hands and joints in turning out. deli- 
cate ribbons. It was very curious and unintelligible 
to me to observe how they caused different colored 
patterns to appear, and even flowers to blossom, on 
the plain surface of a ribbon. Some of the designs 
were pretty, and I was told that one manufacturer 
pays £ 500 annually to French artists (or artisans, for 
I do not know whether they have a connection with 
higher art) merely for new patterns of ribbons. The 
English find it impossible to supply themselves with 
tasteful productions of this sort merely from the re- 
sources of English fancy. If an Englishman possessed 
the artistic faculty to the degi'ee requisite to produce 
such things, he would doubtless think himself a great 
artist, and scorn to devote himself to these humble 
purposes. Every Frenchman is probably more of an 
artist than one Englishman in a thousand. 

We ascended to the very roof of the factory, and 
gazed thence over smoky Coventry, which is now a 
town of very considerable size, and rapidly on the in- 
crease. The three famous spires rise out of the midst, 
that of St. Michael being the tallest and very beauti- 
ful. Had the day been clear, we should have had a 
wide view on all sides ; for Warwickshire is well laid 
out for distant prospects, if you can only gain a little 
elevation from which to see them. 

Descending from the roof, we next went to see Trinity 
Church, which has just come through an entire process 
of renovation, whereby much of its pristine beauty 
has doubtless been restored; but its venerable awful- 



i860.] ENGLAND. 297 

*. . .. J 

ness is greatly impaired. We went into three churches, 
and found that they had all been subjected to the 
same process. It would be nonsense to regret it, be- 
cause the very existence of these old edifices is 
involved in their being renewed ; but it certainly does 
deprive them of a great part of their charm, and puts 
one in mind of wigs, padding, and all such devices for 
giving decrepitude the aspect of youth. In the pave- 
ment of the nave and aisles there are worn tomb- 
stones, with defaced inscriptions, and discolored mar- 
bles affixed against the wall ; monuments, too, where 
a mediaeval man and wife sleep side by side on a mar- 
ble slab ; and other tombs so old that the inscriptions 
are quite gone. Over an arch, in one of the churches, 
there was a fresco, so old, dark, faded, and blackened, 
that I found it impossible to make out a single figure 
or the slightest hint of the design. On the whole, 
after seeing the churches of Italy, I was not greatly 
impressed with these attempts to renew the ancient 
beauty of old English minsters ; it would be better to 
preserve as sedulously as possible their aspect of de- 
cay, in which consists the principal charm 

On our way to Mr. B 's house, we looked into 

the quadrangle of a charity-school and old men's hos- 
pital, and afterwards stepped into a large Roman 
Catholic church, erected within these few years past, 
and closely imitating the mediaeval architecture and 
arrangements. It is strange what a plaything, a 
trifle, an unserious affair, this imitative spirit makes 
of a huge, ponderous edifice, which if it had really 
been built five hundred years ago would have been 

13* 



298 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [i860. 

worthy of all respect. I think the time must soon 
corne when this sort of thing will be held in utmost 
scorn, until the lapse of time shall give it a claim to 
respect. But, methinks, we had better strike out any- 
kind of architecture, so it be our own, however 
wretched, than thus tread back upon the past. 

Mr. B now conducted us to his residence, 

which stands a little beyond the outskirts of the city, 
on the declivity of a hill, and in so windy a spot that, 
as he assured me, the very plants are blown out of the 
ground. He pointed to two maimed trees whose tops 
were blown off by a gale two or three years since ; 
but the foliage still covers their shortened summits in 
summer, so that he does not think it desirable to cut 
them down. 

In America, a man of Mr. B 's property would 

take upon himself the state and dignity of a million- 
naire. It is a blessed thing in England, that money 
gives a man no pretensions to rank, and does not bring 
the responsibilities of a great position. 

We found three or four gentlemen to meet us at 

dinner, — a Mr. D and a Mr. B , an author, 

having written a book called " The Philosophy of Ne- 
cessity," and is acquainted with Emerson, who spent 
two or three days at his house when last in England. 
He was very kindly appreciative of my own produc- 
tions, as was also his wife, next to whom I sat at 
dinner. She talked to me about the author of " Adam 
Bede," whom she has known intimately all her life. 
.... Miss Evans (who wrote ** Adam Bede ") was the 
daughter of a steward, and gained her exact knowl- 



I860.] ENGLAND. 299 

edge of English rural life by the connection with 
which this origin brought her with the farmers. She 
was entirely self-educated, and has made herself an 
admirable scholar in classical as well as in modern 
languages. Those who knew her had always recog- 
nized her wonderful endow^ments, and only watched 
'to see in what way they would devielop themselves. 
She is a person of the simplest manners and character, 

amiable and unpretending, and Mrs. B spoke of 

her with great affection and respect Mr. B •, 

our host, is an extremely sensible man ; and it is re- 
markable how many sensible men there are in Eng- 
land,— men who have read and thought, and can 
develop very good ideas, not extictly original, yet so 
much the product of their own minds that they can 

fairly call them their own 

February 18^A. — .... This present month has 
been somewhat less dismal than the preceding ones ; 
there have been some sunny and breezy days when 
there was life in the air, affording something like 
enjoyment in a walk, especially when the ground 
was frozen. It is agreeable to see the fields still green 
through a partial covering of snow; the trunks and 
branches of the leafless trees, moreover, have a ver- 
dant aspect, very unlike that of American trees in 
winter, for they are covered with a delicate green moss, 
which is not so observable in summer. Often, too, 
there is a twine of green ivy up and down the trunk. 

The other day, as J and I were walking to Whit- 

nash, an elm was felled right across our path, and I 
was tnuch struck by this verdant coating of moss 



300 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [i860. 

over all its surface, — the moss plants too minute to 
be seen individually, but making the whole tree 
green. It has a pleasant effect here, where it is the 
natural aspect of trees in general ; but in America a 
mossy tree-trunk is not a pleasant object, because it 
is associated with damp, low, unwholesome situations. 
The lack of foliage gives many new peeps and vistas, 
hereabouts, which I never saw in summer. 

March 17th, — J and I walked to Warwick 

yesterday forenoon, and went into St. Mary's Church, 

to see the Beauchamp chapel On one side of 

it were some worn steps ascending to a confessional, 
where the priest used to sit, while the penitent, in the 
body of the church, poured his sins through a per- 
forated auricle into this unseen receptacle. The 
sexton showed us, too, a very old chest which had 
been found in the burial vault, with some ancient 
armor stored away in it. Three or four helmets of 
rusty iron, one of them barred, the last with visors, 
and all intolerably weighty, were ranged in a row. 
What heads those must have been that could bear 
such massiveness ! On one of the helmets was a 
wooden crest — some bird or other — that of itself 
weighed several pounds 

BATH. 

April 2Sd. — We have been here several weeks. 
.... Had I seen Bath earlier in my English life, I 
might have written many pages about it, for it is really 
a picturesque and interesting city. It is completely 



I860.] ENGLAND. 301 

sheltered in the lap of hills, the sides of the valley 
rising steep and high from the level spot on which it 
stands, and through which runs the muddy Httle 
stream of the Avon. The older part of the town is 
on the level, and the more modern growth — the 
growth of more than a hundred years — climbs higher 
and higher up the hillside, till the upper streets are 
very airy and lofty. The houses are built almost 
entirely of Bath stone, which in time loses its origi- 
nal buff color, and is darkened by age and coal- 
smoke into a dusky gray; but still the city looks 
clean and pure as compared with most other English 
towns. In its architecture, it has somewhat of a 
Parisian aspect, the houses having roofs rising steep 
from their high fronts, which are often adorned with 
pillars, pilasters, and other good devices, so that you 
see it to be a town built with some general idea of 
beauty, and not for business. There are Circuses, 
Crescents, Terraces, Parades, and all such fine names 
as we have become familiar with at Leamington, and 
other watering-places. The declivity of most of the 
streets keeps them remarkably clean, and they are 
paved in a very comfortable way, with large blocks 
of stone, so that the middle of the street is generally 
practicable to walk upon, although the sidewalks 
leave no temptation so to do, being of generous 
width. In many alleys, and round about the Abbey 
and other edifices, the pavement is of square flags, 
like those of Florence, and as smooth as a palace 
floor. On the whole, I suppose there is no place ii'i. 
England where a retired man, with a moderate in- 



302 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [i860. 

come, could live so tolerably as at Bath; it being 
almost a city in size and social advantages 5 quite so, 
indeed, if eighty thousand people make a city, — and 
yet having no annoyance of business nor spirit of 
worldly struggle. All modes of enjoyment that Eng- 
lish people like may be had here ; and even the cli- 
mate is said to be milder than elsewhere in England. 
How this may be, I know not ; but we have rain 
or passing showers almost every day since we arrived, 
and I suspect the surrounding hills are just about of 
that inconvenient height, that keeps catching clouds, 
and compelling them to squeeze out their moisture 
upon the included valley. The air, however, certainly 
is preferable to that of Leamington. .... 

There are no antiquities except the Abbey, which 
has not the interest of many other English churches 
and cathedrals. In the midst of the old part of the 
town, stands the house which was formerly Beau 
Nash's residence, but which is now part of the es- 
tablishment of an ale-merchant. The edifice is a tall, 
but rather mean-looking, stone building, with the 
entrance from a little side court, which is so cumbered 
with empty beer barrels as hardly to afford a passage. 
The doorway has some architectural pretensions, being 
pillared and with some sculptured devices — whether 
lions or winged heraldic monstrosities I forget --- on 
the pediment. Within, there is a small entry, not 
large enough to be termed a hall, and a staircase, 
with carved balustrade, ascending by angular turns 
and square landing-places. For a long course of 
yea^s, ending a little more than a century ago, princes, 



I860.] ENGLAND. 303 

nobles, and all the great and beautiful people of 
old times, used to go up that staircase, to pay their 
respects to the King of Bath. On the side of the 
house there is a marble slab inserted, recordmg that 
here he resided, and that here he died in 1767, 
between eighty and ninety years of age. My first 
acquaintance with him was in Smollett's '* Roderick 
Random," and I have met him in a hundred other 
novels. 

His marble statue is in a niche at one end of the 
great pump-room, in wig, square-skirted coat, flapped 
waistcoat, and all the queer costume of the period, 
still looking ghost-like upon the scene where he used 
to be an autocrat. Marble is not a good material for 
Beau Nash, however ; or, if so, it requires color to set 
him off adequately 

It is usual in Bath to see the old sign of the 
checker-board on the doorposts of taverns. It was 
originally a token that the game might be played 
there, and is now merely a tavern-sign. 



LONDON. 

31 Hertford Street, May fair, May \<oth, 1860. — 
I came hither from Bath on the 14th, and am 
staying with my friends, Mr. and Mrs. Motley. I 
would gladly journalize some of my proceedings, and 
describe things and people ; but I find the same cold- 
ness and stiffness in my pen as always since our 
return to England. I dined with the Motleys at 
Lord Dufferin's, on Monday evening, and there met. 



304 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [i860. 

among a few other notable people, the Honorable 
Mrs. Norton, a dark, comely woman, who doubtless 
was once most charming, and still has charms, at 
above fifty years of age. In fact, I should not have 
taken her to be greatly above thirty, though she 
seems to use no art to make herself look younger, 
and talks about her time of life, without any squeam- 
ishness. Her voice is very agreeable, having a sort 
of muffled quality, which is excellent in woman. She 
is of a very cheerful temperament, and so has borne 
a great many troubles without being destroyed by 
them. But I can get no color into my sketch, so 
shall leave it here. 

London, May 1 Itli. [From a letter.] — Affairs suc- 
ceed each other so fast, that I have really forgotten 
what I did yesterday. I remember seeing my dear 
friend, Henry Bright, and listening to him, as we 
strolled in the Park, and along the Strand. To-day 
I met at breakfast Mr. Field Talfourd, who promises 
to send you the photograph of his portrait of Mr. 
Browning. He was very agreeable, and seemed de- 
lighted to see me again. At lunch, we had Lord 
DufFerin, the Honorable Mrs. Norton, and Mr. Ster- 
ling (author of the " Cloister Life of Charles V."), with 
whom we are to dine on Sunday. 

You would- be stricken dumb, to see how quietly I 
accept a whole string of invitations, and what is more, 
perform my engagements without a miu-mur. 

A German artist has come to me with a letter of 
introduction, and a request that I will sit to him for a 



1862.] AMERICA. 305 

portrait in bas-relief. To this, likewise, I have as- 
sented ! subject to the condition that I shall have my 
leisure. 

The stir of this London life, somehow or other, has 
done me a wonderful deal of good, and I feel better 
than for months past. This is strange, for if I had 
my choice, I should leave undone almost all the 
things I do. 

I have had time to see Bennoch only once. 

[This closes the European Journal. After Mr. 

Hawthorne's return to America, he published "Our 

, Old Home," and began a new romance, of which two 

^.•> chapters appeared in the Atlantic Monthly. But the 

breaking out of the war stopped all imaginative work 

, with him, and all journalizing, until 1862, when he 

iwent to Maine for a little excursion, and began 

another journal, from which I take one paragraph, 

g'jving a slight note of his state of mind at an interest- 

Ug period of his country's history. — Ed.] 

West Gouldshorough, August Wth^ 1862. — It is a 

week ago, Saturday, since J and I reached this 

place, .... Mr. Barney S. Hill's. 

At Hallowell, and subsequently all along the route, 
the country was astir with volunteers, and the war is 
all that seems to be alive, and even that doubtfully 
so. Nevertheless, the country certainly shows a good 
spirit, the towns offering everywhere most liberal 
bounties, and every able-bodied man feels an immense 
pull and pressure upon him to go to the war. I doubt 
whether any people was ever actuated by a more 

T 



306 FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS. [1862. 

genuine and disinterested public spirit; though, of 
course, it is not unalloyed with baser motives and 
tendencies. We met a train of cars with a regiment 
or two just starting for the South, and apparently in 
high spirits. Everywhere some insignia of soldiership 
were to be seen, — bright buttons, a red stripe down 
the trousers, a military cap, and sometimes a round- 
shouldered bumpkin in the entire uniform. They 
require a great deal to give them the aspect of soldiers ; 
indeed, it seems as if they needed to have a good deal 
taken away and added, like the rough clay of a sculp- 
tor as it grows to be a model. The whole talk of the 
bar-rooms and every other place of intercourse was 
about enlisting and the war, this being the very crisis 
of trial, when the voluntary system is drawing to an 
end, and the draft almost immediately to commence. 



THE END. 



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